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Plain Economic Facts 

FOR ALL PEOPLE 



BY 

AMBROSE M. THOMAS 



COCHRANE PUBLISHING CO. 

NEW YORK 

J909 



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LIBRARY ot CONGRESS 
Two CoRies Received 

MAH 24 1^09 

CLASS O^ XXc. NO. 
*^ COPY 3. 



Copyright, 1909, 
By A. M. THOMAS 



CONTENTS, 



PART PAGB 

I. — Money 9 

II.— Honest Money— Gresham Law 81 

III.— Value — Intrinsic, Extrinsic 113 

IV.— Circulation Per Capita 127 

v.— National Banks 193 

VI.— Taxes-Tariff 233 

VII. Taxes — Internal Revenue 285 

VIII.— Interest— Banks 306 

IX.— Suggestive Afterthoughts 339 

Addendum 359 



AUTHOR'S NOTICE. 

The reader will notice that this book manuscript was 
written in the winter of 1893-4, and deals with all available 
statistics up to that date. For many reasons, not here and 
now relevant, but the reader may divine some of them, it 
was not published until now (1909). But as monetary mat- 
ters are older than history, and even older than well- 
founded tradition, and also that they will be ever new as 
long as mankind inhabits this world, then it can be undoubt- 
edly seen or understood that the conditions existing in one 
decade or so will have their relative influence on a near 
succeeding one, and also that if all statistics were brought 
out down to date, they would only corroborate strongly, tend 
to certify the prophetic sayings and warnings, and more 
appallingly describe and prove the social bane and blight of 
our present and past financial system, than those feebly and 
scantily laid down in these pages. As many of the public 
characters or servants have passed over the range — 
requiescat £n pac£ vel. hades — since these pages were 
scribbled, and as we try to hold to public view their divers 
public sayings and actions,, as we have every right to chas- 
tise or criticise our servants whom we pay from our hard 
earnings to legislate and administrate for us and never 
promise to present them with plenary packages of putrescent 
praise, but proudly permit no one to trespass on the private 
or sacred precincts of personality or real prince pater- 
familias, yet we are aware of the fact that whomsoever 
advances or defends a fixed fiat or a fleeting fad will find 
followers flocking to flay the adversary of their divine 
theories. Now, if any such therfe be upon whose corns we 
have too severely trod, or whose finest sensibilities we have 
wounded, we will only use now the trite saying, "Cap fit him, 
cap wear him," and will only ask, not for commendation, 
but for loud and public condemnation or criticism, for of all 
the imps we despise the most the silent or sly imp, or angel, 
as we believe that discussion and dissatisfaction are the two 
tangent tracks leading at their apex or junction to the haven 
of perfection. Respectfully, 

The Author. 



INTRODUCTORY. 

This braky Manual of Political Economy is written with 
the express intention of simplifying the subject of so-called 
Monetary Science, by endeavoring to dispel, by analysis, that 
foggy mysticism that sickly, sorry sophists and stalwart, 
sponging sycophants have ever strategically enshrouded it 
with. Special prominence being given to the unjust and 
partial class benefits, and their adverse severities of the pres- 
ent age, and yet, righteously Antithetic,. 3,mle, ancient system, 
we do not intend to profusely scatter, and lavishly spill here 
all the healthful sweetmeats, and slaking, luscious juices of 
this book on this prefatory page, but will preserve thern to 
succor and assuage the taciturn, testy, tired, theoretic travel- 
ler, thirsty after financial sociology, or, rather, after taut, tac- 
tile, tandem-taxing truths, so that the deeper he dives into our 
phonetic, pungent pond, the more mitigating and mollient 
measure of mead he may meet, and mix for his monetary 
menstruum. While strictly following a most exact, explicit 
and true definition and qualification of matter, measures, 
methods, money and men, yet we hope this meddlesome 
Manual will not be misconstrued into a tiresome, taunting 
tirade against or on all serious, seriated students or fashion- 
able, foppish, fanatical followers and flatterers of snappish 
sophistical financiers, or on metaphysical and inductive or 
assumptive philosophers of social science, nor against the 
socially bald, bold and blighting beneficiaries of both. The 
impartial treatment that the integrant parts of this subject 
receive from the writer may taste somewhat slightly sour to, 
or softly jar with strumming sound on the musically solemn 
or poetically syringed ear of the' stylish, superficial stripling, 
or even to shining, stubbly senility ; but they may give it 



tempting tone and tang, by triturating with it a very small 
dose of well sweetened toddy or sweet-scented temper. With 
that gentle hint we will offer no further palliating or explan- 
atory introductory other than the following, our poetasters 
dog: 

DOGGEREL NO. I. 

To please I have not tried, but very truly Vd 

Your most humble servant be ; 
If you'd not often halt, and study to find fault, 

With all statements made by me. 
If you or friends get sorely hurt, you shouldn't stamp nor 
spurt, 

For to let you down thus tenderly 
I've did my great big best, indeed, now for the rest 

I'd see you one mile up a tree. 
Now if you are too cute, and this jingling verse don't suit, 

Let all your friends both hear and see ; 
How mighty little I'd care to say, if all were there, 

Move on, still higher, up that tall tree. 

The Author. 
(A Gold Mine Owner.) 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS FOR 
ALL PEOPLE 



PART L 

MONEY. 

Design. — First Coinage. — Fixity. — Comparative measure. — A fixed 
comparate. — Establishing comparate. — Defined. — Kinds of. — Intrinsic 
value gold. — If circulation doubled. — Composites. — Platinum as. — 
Why intrinsic value talk. — Usurer. — Edict. — World's stock gold. — 
Silver. — Law value. — When plenty. — Very old law. — Glut of. — Over 
country's distributive share leaving. — Is gold bettter than paper? — 
Money statistics 25 countries. — Paper money no innovation. — Iron. — 
Platinum. — Gold. — Copper. — Silver. — Nickel. — "March to the Sea." — 
Sherman Act repeal. — Talk on senators. — Tribute to mass. — Old and 
new dollar standard. — How silver was demonetized. — Cost of pro- 
duction. — Heard in U. S. Senate. — Heavenly home. — Europe not over- 
fed. — Dark horse. — Conditions for paper money. — Co-operative U. S. 
Bank. — Baby's new nose. — Bonds, paper, gold. — Axiom, the law cre- 
ates all money value.- 

Money is the graphic photo of the evolution of human 
imagination in its deliberate meditation in devising plans for 
the establishment of some general agent or factor, to enable 
man to carry on barter or trade in a less cumbersome mode 
or manner than that which previously existed, or, in other 
words, to facilitate exchange. 

In ancient times the merchants devised a medium of ex- 
change from shells and other trinkets, and regulated their 
comparative value in certain districts, while the govern- 
ments busied themselves only with laying tributes and at- 
tending to their regular wars. Later they picked up float 
metals such as stream tin, etc., and learning something of 
their qualities, such as deliquescence and malleability, soon 
worked them into convenient and portable shapes and used 
them as tokens of barter. Seeking out the sources of the 
float metals, we learn that they mined them, using all of 

9 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

them that they could procure as money or a convenient me- 
dium of trade or exchange. 

Next came the rulers, who, learning of the benefits to be 
derived from its regulation and coinage, entered the busmess, 
until more enlightened ideas prevailed, which left the ruler 
only its regulation and pay for the expenses of coinage, be- 
sides some profit called seigniorage ; this left the right to the 
subject to bring his bullion to the mint and have it coined 
and the coin returned to him, less the expense of coinage 
and seigniorage. 

Money, by some, is called or. known as having a fixed- 
standard of value as a measure of other merchantable values, 
but this understanding or definition is erroneous as to fixity 
or constancy, and must remain so until some more just and 
equitable and universal method or device for measuring, 
comparing and requiting values than that of the evolution, 
digested in the barren brain of the barbarian, is reasoned out, 
experimented on, or proven by deduction and adopted. 

In recognizing the full legal tender command of money, 
it must be admitted that it is a comparative legal measure, 
since its being assured that Government and all society will 
redeem it in a relative measure for whatever becomes due 
them; but as to fixity or constancy in value-measure it is as 
vacillant and versatile as the windy weather of withering 
winter, for in order that the individual may pay his tax or 
debts, payable only in such a changing factor, he is often 
compelled to give up twice the amount that is sometimes 
only necessary to cancel a similar amount of debt, of a 
commodity with as unchangeable and stable a value as Na- 
ture endows her gifts with, possessing such values as are 
absolutely essential to the preservation of every individual's 
existence, the prescience or existence of such value being 
known, ever present and demonstrable. 

Money would have more stability as a legal measure of 
value if it had a fixed counterbalance or designated com- 
parate of real actual or intrinsic value, or a fixed quantity of 
some commodity possessing the inherent elements to satisfy 
human necessities, such as 412^ grains standard silver shall 
equal in exchange 60 pounds of wheat, the former to be one 
dollar, legal tender, the latter not to be sold within this jur- 
isdiction for less than the fictitious or legal value of the 

10 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

former ; and the intrinsic worth or virtue of the latter would 
mutually assist each other in maintaining the prescribed 
measure or standard of each other and both. 

If it is permissible for Government or society to pre- 
scribe the measure of a legal value of any number of tokens 
or piece-evidences of law that an individual must provide for 
the cancellation of a debt, that society through the creditor 
demands, it must be as admissible that the same arbiter can 
prescribe the measure that the individual must at least re- 
ceive for a commodity of real value which society demands 
for its existence and preservation. 

Under such conditions it would be to the mutual benefit 
of all the members of that society to maintain the fixed 
measure of that commodity and the relative measure of all 
other commodities and thereby prevent, to a great extent, 
the manipulation of the legal fictitious value and render it 
impossible to reduce the standard of commodities below 
a given or established mark, and the deviations from that 
measure could not be as baleful as they now are under the 
non-comparate or metal standard. Competing commodities 
of foreign production could be taxed the difference if sold 
for less at our ports, or prohibited, as we now prohibit or 
never recognize their legal tender measure. 

From 1792 A.D., until 1873 A.D., we fixed a value or 
measure on two American and world-wide produced com- 
modities — silver and gold — the latter now being the only 
commodity whose measure of value is stated for future 
guidance, or fixed by law, under which stated price it cannot 
remain. Now it evidently follows that, if a government 
can fix the price of two commodities, it can as consistently 
fix the minimum price of a dozen or of all other commodi- 
ties within its own territory, which would tend to enhance 
its price universally, but which latter should be no incentive 
and not concern any individual government other than to 
give its own productions their duly equivalent standing 
among the people or nations of the earth. 

Gold and silver in the main maintained for each other and 
both during all this time their relative measure or prescribed 
standard from the fact that society in its general commercial 
relations was guided and ruled by the law, which stability 
could in no sense be maintained on account of their relative 

II 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

intrinsic value, as some designing knaves pretended, or in 
company with the deluded fools mysteriously believed, which 
leads us to a full comparison of the intrinsic values of 
metals used as money. 

Money is is an impotential, inert, uncreative commodity of 
exchange and possesses little real or actual value, its only 
value being its law-created functions in its role of being 
the imperative measure of itself only, and the legal nominal 
representative of other real values ; its own value arises from 
the expressed, fictitious, mandatory and legal qualities or 
decrees centered in and allowed it by universally recognized 
governments, the authority for such grant or decree, as is 
now universally practiced, arising from the sanction or ac- 
quiescence of the governed. 

A disputed part of an undeniable, although heretofore 
undefined, value is derived from long-continued usage and 
custom, known as prescriptive value, coupled with a deplor- 
ably general and widespread ignorance of its origin, source, 
design and functions, aided by an inexpressibly subtle or 
mysterious, all-devouring, far-reaching influence to it attrib- 
uted, bordering on the supernatural or akin to it, which is 
the natural consequence of the heretofore human reverence 
and awe- for anything known to or believed to exist and but 
vaguely understood, or the qualities or attributes of which 
were not considered susceptible of plain and easy demon- 
stration. 

Money may be said to be of three kinds, namely— first, 
legal tender; second, limited legal tender; third, auxihary 
or optional with the payee as to its acceptance in the liquida- 
tion of debts. 

Legal tender money consists of all that species endowed 
with that imperative, fiducial fiat, decree or command, there- 
by rendering it obligatory on the creditor to receive it in 
cancellation of all indebtedness or forfeit the right of its 
collection, when the transaction leading up to the debt occurs 
within the jurisdiction of the country of which either party 
to the transaction is a resident or citizen, or both. 

Legal tender money has a unit measure or stipulated stand- 
ard amount, which may be specifically defined, or but sim- 
ply designated, which serves as a starting point or unit mark 

12 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

basis to be used in the application of all reckonings, the same 
as the figure or number one in mathematics. 

When metal has been used as the element of which the 
unit measure of value was to be composed, the enumerated 
amount of grains are stipulated or regulated by law or enact- 
ment of legislature, as was the case in the United States 
from A.D., 1792 until A.D. 1873, during which time 37^ 
grains pure silver constituted the unit and was called one 
dollar, to which was added 10 per cent, of alloy or other 
metal (copper), in order to render the piece more hard or 
durable and in order to incur less loss from abrasion than 
would otherwise occur. 

All other coins had a relative measure of value with 
this silver dollar; that is, a fractional or multiple measure, 
arising from their specific contents, numerical denomination 
or relatively monetary or commercial worth or legal tender 
qualities. 

Legal tender paper money derives its similarly correspond- 
ing value from the same source as metallic money ; that is, 
the legal tender qualities given it by law, the intrinsic value 
of either being iDut a very small fraction of their monetary 
or commercial standing or value. 

In order to arrive at the intrinsic value of gold it is nec- 
essary to contrast it with some other useful metal, for in- 
stance, iron, in acting extraordinarily liberal and comput- 
ing gold to be ten times better adapted for some uses in 
the arts, such as filling decaying teeth, gilding, or in the 
application of the Keely jag cure, than iron, the intrinsic 
value of which is gauged as two cents per pound, we arrive 
at a computative intrinsic value of twenty cents per pound 
for gold, which is far in excess of its comparative useful- 
ness. 

Limited legal tender money may be composed of paper, 
cloth or metal, the same as full legal tender, its designated 
integer being stamped thereon, which may be legal tender for 
any amount in case of certain debts and for limited amounts 
in case of all debts, as, for instance, according to ideology, 
the hylozoic greenback, the hyperbolical subsidiary silver, 
the occult nickel or the lowly but cognate conjuring copper. 

Under the head of auxiliary money may be named bank 
notes or checks, individual notes or checks, which are simply 

13 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

promises to pay money, but which serve all the purposes of 
legal tender money when received and receipted for by the 
creditor, as though it was clothed with debt-liquidating 
powers, but no note except government notes can constitute 
an absolute legal tender ; therefore, all such auxiliary money 
IS optional money — that is, optional with the creditor. Also 
under this head may be grouped or classed the almost innu- 
merable trades and barters of stocks, bonds, deeds, mort- 
gages, etc., and even blind horses, brindle cows and brecciated 
mules or burlesque burros. 

In 1873 silver was surreptitiously demonetized at the in- 
stance of a London (Eng.) bank agent named Ernest Seyd, 
who, according to statements in congressional records, had 
given to the committee that had the bill in charge — of which 
the refutable Sherman was one — some very valuable assist- 
ance, suggestions and advice. This Seyd, according to his 
own statement afterward to a reputable citizen of Denver, 
Col., a copy of whose voluntary oath we will give further on, 
had given or paid to American traitors the sum of $500,000 
in British gold to effect his nefarious design against the 
welfare of all American producers. 

The bill demonetizing silver set up or established 23.2 
grains of pure gold as the unit measure of legal tender 
metallic money and named it one dollar. By that act 
between five and six hundred million legal tender silver 
money was wiped out, and the United States thereby de- 
prived of so much debt-paying power then by the payment 
of one-half million to America's political Benedict Arnolds. 
Silver was partially remonetized since, but never received 
the benefits of free coinage, simply because England and our 
national banks so desired it. 

As soon as the legal tender monetary qualities and bene- 
fits of free coinage of silver were by law withdrawn, its price 
or market value commenced to decline from the fact that 
one great source of its employment was thereby closed 
against it by a country which previously had not only used it, 
but set its price,, which price it could not permanently remain 
below within the country, no matter what the price of silver 
bullion in other countries might have been. 

We see by this act, as by all other financial acts, that the 
law alone creates money, no matter what its material evi- 

14 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

dences or tokens are composed of. An irremediable decay 
of the intrinsic properties of the silver had not been discov- 
ered to permeate it ; neither was it discovered that nature had 
bestowed life-giving or sustaining powers to gold, that were 
to the uneducated unknown. 

Silver tokens were used as mediums of exchange to ex- 
press the will of society from 1792 until 1873, when this law 
suddenly cut off five or six hundred millions of previously 
absolutely legal tender money, without substituting the 
amount by any other kind, as also preventing its further free 
coinage, which was simply a robbery of that amount from 
the people of the nation, who had entered all enterprises 
and made all their calculations in accordance with a certain 
amount of money in circulation, the amount in circulation 
being the only safe guide in placing an estimate or value on 
labor or property of any description; for, if the circulation 
doubled, then all commodities doubled in cost and price, and 
if the circulation was cut down one-half all properties would 
be reduced in price one-half, but in an abstract sense this 
would not injure a nation, as it could not reduce the intrinsic 
qualities of a nation's properties or resources, if all its com- 
merce was confined within its own boundaries, by reducing 
its nominal or literal worth or market quotation, if interest 
and previous loans were reduced proportionally, as well as 
taxes and all other public expenses; but in carrying on com- 
mercial intercourse with other nations, who have not simul- 
taneously and similarly reduced their legal representative of 
value, we are at a relative loss in exchanging commodities 
with them. 

Metals or pieces of metal or ^ny other material are not 
money, and cannot be a definite full legal tender, the mate- 
rial only being the one or more selected by society on "which 
to imprint their device or mace as the piece-evidence of a 
law, ordering him who wishes to do business within that soci- 
ety to accept the same for its nominal amount, the financial 
law of that_society being the only value it possesses, which 
at best is but a guess, both fallible and indefinite. The nat- 
ural intrinsic values or properties of any material whose 
beneficial qualities are conducive to supplying man's neces- 
sities or comfortable existence, that tend to uphold or sustain 
its current price increasingly, as the population of the earth 

15 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

increases, are desirable only for use as money, in so far as 
such current price will lead to the discouragement of other 
issues than that of the universally recognized authorities, 
such as counterfeiting, which nowadays is not being carried 
to any great extent and is easily guarded against. 

Money in all ages, so far as the most meagre or most 
complete historical or traditional account informs us, has 
been composed of or struck from different materials, such 
as animals, metals, minerals, animal hydrocarbons, plants or 
fibres, and in some cases of biped animals, sometirnes known 
as human beings, some of which we will here mention. 

Platinum, gold, silver, nickel, copper, iron, sheep, shells, 
rubies, garnets, etc. ; hides, leather, animal claws, etc. ; wam- 
pum, tobacco, paper, slaves, etc., etc. We will now cursorily 
examine the relative inherent or intrinsic properties or ele- 
ments of some of the foregoing materials, as regards their 
use in the arts or as tends to materially benefit the human 
race in the application of the same to their wants or ordinate 
uses or desires. 

Platinum when pure is about the same degree of hardness 
as iron, that is, 4 to 4.5 ; its specific gravity is about 21.5 or 
about i-io heavier than gold, or 21^ times as heavy as the 
same volume of cold water, about or nearly the same specific 
gravity, atomic relation and density as that of gold. 

This metal is not so far found in nature of sufficient quan- 
tity to ever warrant its coming into general use, as the annual 
production of the world rarely exceeds five tons, while the 
production of gold exceeds 250 tons, which fact, therefore, 
greatly detracts from its otherwise value of importance, on 
account of its inadequate sufficiency of volume for the re- 
quirements of man as tokens, of a medium of exchange, or 
for practical utility in cases for which it is found best suited. 

Platinum is found in grains mostly in alluvium deposits 
composed of the detritus of subcrystalline or serpentine 
rocks, from which fact the inference may be safely deduced 
of the unlikelihood of its ever being found in quantity suffi- 
cient to supply the constant and unsatisfied demand ever for 
it in the arts since the discovery of its now known qualities. 

Platinum is one of the most infusible substances known 
and, being 100 per cent, harder than gold, as well as being 
slightly magnetic, which latter peculiarity is increased in the 

16 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

ratio of the iron in it or alloyed with it; besides possessing 
other highly prized qualities of gold, such as resistance to 
air, moisture and most chemical agents, rendering it of great 
value in constructing chemical and philosophical apparatus. 

But its infusibility alone, rendering it far more desirable 
for practical use in the arts — particularly in the applica- 
tion of extreme heat necessary in the manufacture of some 
materials — than gold, and of far greater value, simply from 
its resistance to heat ; yet gold will resist the action of some 
chemicals that platinum cannot, as can be seen in the large 
stills in use in the concentration of sulphuric acid, which are 
made of platinum, but which have to be gilded within with 
gold, because the acid attacks the platinum and would soon 
cause it to leak. Caustic potash and phosphoric acid, in con- 
tact with carbon, also attacks it, so it can be seen that those 
faulty qualities offset in a measure the failings of gold, re- 
garding its qualities of inferior hardness and easier deliques- 
cence. 

It would, therefore, be reasonable to ascribe an equal in- 
trinsic, inherent, actual or real value to each metal ; provid- 
ed, however, that each metal could be procured in equal vol- 
ume at equal cost of production. But since gold has been 
found in greater volume and at proportionate expense, it is 
therefore of greater volumetric or quantity value or import- 
ance to man, in accordance with the volume procured, while 
intrinsic qualities are equally balanced, which, according to 
some misguided economists, would lower the price of gold; 
but in its case we see it is not the fact, for platinum has a 
far lower market price solely on account of its price not 
being fictitiously fixed by universal or general law and its 
not being employed to any great extent as a monetary token, 
and as gold can be substituted in the arts, except for resisting 
some acidic agents, though which, used as money, it never 
encounters ; so that again we see that the law and the full or 
extra use given gold, fixes its price or commercial value and 
increases or enhances that price and decreases the price of 
all other commodities according as its volume decreases, or 
as the volume of business and wealth increases disproportion- 
ately with the volume of gold circulating as money; or, 
rather, the amount of full legal tender money in circula- 
tion. 

17 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

Platinum has been coined in Russia into pieces of eleven 
and twenty-two roubles (they may be in circulation there 
yet, but for proof of same some other authority must be 
sought, as I have not been in Russia lately) each, which 
are of full legal tender quality. It can be used like gold 
for covering copper, brass, etc., and^ painting porcelain, giv- 
ing it a steel lustre; it is ductile and malleable, like gold, 
and of a steel-gray color. It is rarely found pure, gener- 
ally combined with iron or copper or with the rarer metals, 
iridium, osmium, palladium, rhodium or ruthenium, 
sometimes combined with two or more of the foregoing, 
which gives it a darker color and increases its hardness 
to that of fine steel. 

Gold when pure is about one-half as hard as iron and 
2^ times as heavy, its specific gravity or known relative 
weight being 19.25, iron y.y, its specific hardness between 
2 and 23^, iron 4 to 4^. Gold is rarely found pure, the 
native generally being alloyed with either one or more of 
the following metals: Silver, bismuth, copper, iron, pal- 
ladium or rhodium, and sometimes mineralized by tellu- 
rium. Its origin or source is little known, its principal 
matrix being metamorphic slates, crystallized in veins of 
schist and granite and other rocks. From all authentic his- 
torical account and known experience, its volume in nature 
does not exceed the 1-28 and its weight the 1-16 ot-that of 
silver, a& there has been sufficient proof found, in the ap- 
plication of knowledge and force expended for the discov- 
ery and production of both metals, to establish the above 
fact regarding their relative volumes in nature. The re- 
nowned Dr. Adolf Soetbeer agrees to the above propor- 
tional volume of each. 

The intrinsic or inherent qualities or properties of gold 
may be laid down as resistance to most chemical agents, 
but not all, as it is soluble in aqua regia and the persalts of 
iron attacks it, as do some others ; it will resist most chemi- 
cal agents which to most other minerals would be of a 
corrosive or deteriorative nature, but these chemicals are 
seldom carried loose in the pockets or spilled about the 
drawers of the safe. It ■ possesses, like silver and other 
metals, malleability and ductility, which renders it useful 
in the arts ; that is, it enables, the artist, mechanic or fabri- 

18 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

cator to produce somewhat easier some production for 
human information, comfort and convenience than might 
otherwise be done. But the chief intrinsic attribute is re- 
sistance to some acids, as other metals contain all the other 
qualities possessed by gold and several of them equal 
qualities and several better. 

While it must be admitted that it is quite convenient to 
have gold as an element for the arts, yet it is not at all 
absolutely necessary, nor even necessary for experiments 
for new discoveries, and has no direct or positive influence 
on human existence, and a fair estimation and comparison 
of all its derivable or derived benefits to the human race 
may be deduced from the knowledge that every one pos- 
sesses, that if all the gold in the world was collected it would 
be necessary to alloy it with some other metal so as to 
harden it before it would make sixty-pound rails as good 
as iron, for fifty-five miles of railroad, and, if pure, that steel 
rails would have at least sixteen times its resistance, 
so that gold rails would require over i,ooo pounds to the 
yard before a locomotive could safely pass over them. 

It is one of the most expensive or costly elements of 
utility and, on account of its small volume in nature, one 
of, if not the, most useless metalHc elements of human 
production, its cost of production being, in comparison 
with the benefits derived by man from its intrinsic value, 
through external utilitarian applications, at least 1,500 
times more than the advantages or benefits conferred on 
society or the race are worth to either or both. 

The labor cost does not add to its intrinsic value or nat- 
ural qualities, as no amount of labor or experiments as yet 
known, or as likely to be known, to man by man, can add 
one iota to the natural or inherent value of gold or take 
one away. It is true that the chemist can change its form 
and appearance through the agency of fire or chemicals, 
but the gold, like other metals, remains the same element 
in nature, and can be restored to its former state, although 
it may be alloyed with some other metals or mineralized, or 
whether it be dissolved with chemicals. The labor cost, 
instead of adding to its value, it would be more reasonable 
to assert that it detracted therefrom, from the amount of 
all the forces necessary to be applied in order to discover 

19 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

and obtain it, in comparison with the very small propor- 
tionate benefits derived from it, it is an absolute waste of 
effort, and its production may be said to be one of the 
most fruitless and barbarous occupations retained by man 
or indulged in in this so-called enlightened age. 

That property or quality which renders it an appropri- 
ate metal from which to manufacture piece evidences or 
tokens of legal tender, limited tender or auxiliary money 
arises partly from its mere nominal loss by fire similarly 
with all other metals and partly from its resistance to atmos- 
pheric action, like silver, nickel, etc. (although money is 
rarely exposed to moisture or atmospheric action, or used 
for show, only as an alluring bait for depositors in banks 
or other like gambling institutions) ; partly from resistance 
to acidic elements, such as lemon candy carried loose with 
money in the pockets, or sulphuric fumes arising from 
nature, or wood, or sulphur carried in the pocket, either of 
which would tarnish steel or iron money, although the 
pocket knife will carry bright for quite a while, and a good 
blade will last a century for whittling kindling shavings. 

One of the soundest and most profound philosophical 
reasonings for using the metal gold as tokens of money 
may be summed up as follows: Suppose a man was 
drowned with $ioo of gold or silver money in his pockets 
and with either laid undisturbed for fifty years before 
being missed, discovered and raised, the gold or silver 
money, most likely, would not be much impaired by chlor- 
idization, as about only one per cent, of salt water is chlor- 
ine. But if such a calamity should befall a man with $ioo 
of legal tender iron money, it would most likely be one-half 
oxydized, and perhaps society's mace either obliterated or 
illegible; at any rate some of the iron would be dissolved 
before found, so from this it may readily be inferred that 
there are no set of astute statesmen of any nation whatever 
that could with reasonable wisdom dare to beard even the 
possibility of such colossal contingencies and madly run 
the risk of having a man drowned with any other than 
gold or silver money in his pocket, for even the blind, rank 
suckers of the deep might even swallow paper money— it 
mattered not whether it was tendered to them legally or 

20 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

thrown to them scornfully as refuse scraps of galling bank 
debts. 

The average cost of the production of one ounce of gold 
may be laid down at $15 per ounce. The ores that are 
worked for their gold contents principally would barely 
average $14 per ton, which ranges from as low as $3 up. 
The cost of mining would average $2 per ton, ranging from 
fifty cents up to $12 per ton. The cost of extracting the 
gold from the rock by fire, water and mercury, or chemi- 
cals may be laid down as averaging $5 per ton, ranging 
from twenty cents up to $14. The cost of freight, averag- 
ing $iy ranging from twenty cents up to $7 per ton, and $2 
per ton for interest on money invested in property, machin- 
ery, power, repairs, etc. But this average $10 cost per ton 
does not include the loss or cost to society for failures, 
which would make its cost per ounce amount to over $30 
per oimce. The average $10 cost per ton only applies to 
profit-yielding gold properties. The foregoing average is 
but mere guesswork, as there is no authentic statistics on 
the subject, but yet it may be regarded as approximately 
right, as all those qualified to speak on the subject know, 
and limit it within this range. 

Golil is a very unreliable or unstable commodity. In 
asserting the foregoing we do so from the fact, as we have 
stated in a previous paragraph, that its origin or source 
is little known or imperfectly understood, as all of the 
foremost mineralogists, both descriptive and determinative, 
as far as their researches have gone, have never agreed as 
to its general source, deposition or distribution in nature. 
Some hold to the eruptive theory, some to the segregation 
theory, and others to the theory of the precipitation of 
gold held in solution by salt waters and at one time passing 
over the heated or semi-molten rocks, the heat driving oflF 
the chlorine and the gold' being deposited as native gold, 
all having in a way reasonable inferences to guide them. 

Unstable also from the fact that it gives but very slight 
indications of its presence, even to the most practised eye, 
which is not the case with any other metal ; as also its 
very sparse distribution in any locality, even the most pro- 
lific, although being found all over the world, but not in 
quantity sufficient so that, with the cheapest labor and all 

21 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

appliances and the most favorable conditions, it could be 
made to pay expenses, even at the fabulous market price 
or commercial rate it now brings, as all low grade but 
large bodies of the ore should at least contain an average 
of one-fourth ounce of gold per ton, and this will only pay 
by the most judicious management, a large plant of machin- 
ery and very favorable conditions. Unstable from its very 
uncertain amount in any given vein or deposit, its similar 
uncertainty in its distribution in the vein or ledge and the 
uncertain continuity of the vein, lode, ledge or deposit, and 
irregularity in extent as to length, breadth or width. 

One of its former greatest yielding sources, while they 
lasted, were the placers of the world, which now are all 
practically exhausted, if Africa does not come to the rescue 
of the gold idolators, and none can be found to replace 
them, except you set fire to the frozen, fabulous fields of 
Alaska. All of the foregoing well-known conditions ren- 
der it the most unstable metal, regarding future yield, that 
man is engaged in the production of. It is a well-known 
fact to all those of an intelligent and investigating turn 
of mind, who are interested and engaged in its discovery 
and production, that practically all of its probable sources 
of yield are now discovered, and those fields in Africa 
were known to exist there long ago and that those that 
may yet be discovered will not be, or cannot be, of suffi- 
cient volume to cause a disturbance in its market price on 
account of possible increase of stock, and that, on account 
of improved methods, machinery and appliances for its de- 
velopment and extraction, that consequently it is more than 
reasonably certain that the annual production of gold will 
enter on a steady decline in from ten to fifteen years and 
that decline gradually and certainly increase. 

In connection with the cost of production we deem it 
prudent to here give some authorities on this subject. Ac- 
cording to the report of the commission appointed by 
the Australian Government in 1854, it says: "That in all 
ages the cost of producing the precious metals has exceed- 
ed their commercial value." As to the Australian produc- 
tion of that time, it says: 'That the gold per man per 
week scarcely equalled the amount of one man's day's 
wages. In Del Mar's history of the precious metals we 

22 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

find that, "the gold cost $ioo per ounce that was produced 
in California from 1848 to 1856." So much for metallic 
monetary maniacs. 

The malleability of gold admits of its being hammered 
out into very thin sheets, but this property is of very little 
practical benefit, as other metals possess the same or simi- 
lar qualities. Its ductility or tenuity admits of it being 
drawn out into very fine wire or threads, the benefits aris- 
ing from such utility being but meagre indeed ; silver, plati- 
num and other metals afford the same pastime to the 
wayward artist, but neither wires would be suitable for 
baling hay or fencing hogs. Now, platinum and silver, like 
other metals, can be drawn out so fine and agree so well 
with the wires of gold that, in the most aesthetic arrange- 
ment of the most elegant lady's hair under the most costly 
ornamented and superb coiffure, they might be mistaken 
for the poetical ''Silver threads among the gold." 

There are other uses to which gold is put or adminis- 
tered which, but for that vast expanse of mystery and in- 
terminable jungle of speculation, might be laid down as ac- 
crediting it some more intrinsic value; that is, its use as a 
medicine for the cure of internal diseases- in man. Of 
course, this attributed property must ever remain specula- 
tive, as no tangible proof can ever be visibly demonstrated 
of its curative properties, which would not be the case as 
to its killing qualities, which could be more satisfactorily 
proven after death; but, however, we will give a summary 
of its uses in that respect if for nothing more than to give 
its comparative qualities with other metals, such as silver,. 
copper and iron. 

Gold is used as a medicine by the regular school of phy- 
sicians in the form or consistency. of a chloride and as a 
sodium chloride, first, for the cure of schlerosis, or harden- 
ing of any part of the nervous system or other tissues of 
the body ; second, depression of spirits ; third, in secondary 
and tertiary syphilis; fourth, destructive ulceration of the 
nose ; fifth, for the consequences of mercurial poisoning. 
The homoeopathic school of medicine uses it for about the 
same diseases, but mostly in a metallic form, triturated 
with sugar of milk. The chloride is from the element 
chlorine, which constitutes over 60 per cent, of our com- 

23 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

mon salt, the sodium chloride being our common salt, the 
soda being 39.3 per cent, of the salt (less moisture), and 
there is no one as yet, but the King of the Cannibal Is- 
lands, who knows whether it is the chlorine, sodium or 
gold that does the curing act, and he, the King, would not 
know either, only he eats the human being alive and raw, 
so is thereby par excellence the judge. 

Silver when found native is generally alloyed or mixed 
with gold or copper. It is found combined with sulphur, 
selenium, tellurium, arsenic, antimony, bismuth, iodine, 
chlorine, mercury and bromine. Being found accompanied 
by four or more elem.ents than gold, it may be laid down 
as a fair average that silver ore worked or treated for 
its metallic contents would be about fourteen ounces silver 
and i/io ounce gold, mostly accompanied by iron, lead 
or copper — sometimes two, or all three of them. 

Silver is malleable and ductile, but not to such an ex- 
treme degree as gold, but sufficient for all practical pur- 
poses, if not for the most fastidious. It is somewhat 
harder or more durable than gold and a little over one-half 
the specific gravity, gold being 19.25, silver 10.5. It dis- 
solves in nitric acid, but, like gold, it is impervious to the 
normal atmosphere or moisture. The only intrinsic value 
or inherent quality difference between gold and silver is 
the resistance by gold of more acidic agencies than that of 
silver, though both are soluble in the proper acid, and can 
thus be used as a preserving, or overcoat, for other metals 
whose system or lungs might be pronounced not robust 
enough to stand the weeping, withering, whistling, wintry 
winds, wilfully whizzing through its wiry whiskers. 

It is, indeed, rather difficult for us to arrive at a distinct, 
comparative and constant difference in the intrinsic values 
of gold and silver, as both can be made use of in all re- 
spects, with the insignificant acidic exception, for all prac- 
tical purposes, with very similar results. Gold has that 
small property that silver does not possess, but silver's vol- 
ume in nature outbalances gold wherein the silver may be 
lacking, and silver, being more durable than gold, will bear 
. more striking, rubbing or pressing force. In bangles, span- 
gles and gewgaws, it will keep equally bright, although this 
quality can scarcely be held to be of any appreciable benefit 

24 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

in the case of either metal, for it is only supposed to adorn 
and satisfy the whims of the light-minded. In all cases 
where comfort, convenience or aesthetic furnishings are re- 
quired each metal renders equal beneficial results, and noth- 
ing is left but the fanciful, individual opinion as to cost' 
and color. Of course, for a lady with a pure white skin 
silver ornaments would become her best ; but, then, they 
are not the rage, for they are too cheap. Then, again, a 
lady belonging to the more numerous class, with a manu- 
factured face and raw-material, yellow neck, the gold suits 
her natural hide best, as by its deep saffron color it de- 
tracts attention from her butter-colored neck, so there is 
considerable philosophy in her style. 

In order to contrast gold and silver, regarding their 
adaptation to the wants of man as a necessary of life, let us 
illustrate thus: Suppose a man desired to build him a 
house, which is a necessary, and that he could procure 
studdings and sheets of gold and silver of any dimensions 
at equal cost per pound, if size was the only item to be 
considered, he could build twice as large a house with simi- 
lar-dimensioned materials with silver as he could with gold, 
and the house would be more durable; but if weight was 
the item of importance both buildings would have similar 
enclosed spaces, and the silver construction many times 
more durable than the gold, so that for practical utility a 
similar weight of silver has more intrinsic value than gold, 
the sophistry of the Bank of England and the Rothschilds 
notwithstanding. We see that silver has the advantage in 
this particular, intrinsic quality and instance, as it has in 
any case where the article requires durability, as an item 
of importance or enhancement, where rubbing or knocking 
force or size enters as an item to be considered, as we all 
known that four ounces of silver will better preserve the 
machinery of a watch than four ounces of gold, so this 
inherent advantage, which can always be fully supplied 
from its great volume in nature, should surely oft'set the 
gold's acidic advantage and leave the both of equal intrin- 
sic value, with any difference in favor of silver. 

Silver is a more stable metal than gold, which needs no 
further proof than the knowledge of the fact that from 
its earliest, history we fi^nd its volume of production to be 

25 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

at least sixteen times that of gold in weight and nearly 
twice that amount again in size. The stability or fixity of 
silver is by this fact made so plain that it needs no further 
description or proof to satisfy anyone of average balanced 
brains, whether he be a graduate of Harvard, the old log 
school, Yale or Eaton. 

The cost of the production of silver may be laid down 
with reasonable certainty at $1.15 per ounce, for all that 
produced from all mines known as producers, and includ- 
ing all those that pay a profit, those that barely pay expenses, 
as well as those that are worked, with a reasonable hope of 
success, from contiguity to paying mines, or from similar 
formations and indications. But this price would not re- 
imburse society for its outlay in making such production 
possible, if all the efforts and fruits of past labor, money, 
wasted and still wasting, was reckoned against it, it would 
be safe and conservative to place its cost at $2.50 per 
ounce at least. 

But as the curse of trying to maintain and sustain a 
metallic money, like all other direful hardships, falls on 
labor only, and discommodes the interest-gatherer not, we 
have no kick coming, but we will here playfully offer a 
report — offered in the United States Senate on August 31, 
1893, by one of the Senators from Colorado — on the cost 
of the production of silver per ounce. But it should be 
remembered that the two mining camps mentioned in the 
report are the two foremost silver producers in the world. 
One of them, Leadville, has two transcontinental railroad 
lines passing through, as also the terminus of a branch of 
the Union Pacific system, together with six smelting plants, 
with an invested capital of some $3,000,000, and an abun- 
dance of coal and flux in the surrounding country; the 
other, Aspen, has two branches of the two aforesaid trans- 
continental railroad lines. Thus both have all necessary 
conveniences for transportation, thereby having advantages 
over other silver-producing camps, which amounts to a very 
large item in mining. Therefore, those camps cannot be 
taken as a safe criterion, only in a relative sense. Again, 
the report makes no mention of the fact that, when those 
camps become exhausted, those branch lines will have to 
be abandoned, together with all the real property, except 

26 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

they turn the cities into amphitheatres for bear and moun- 
tain Hons, as those cities and surrounding country are at too 
great an elevation to produce annual crops, with the excep- 
tion of an abundant harvest of snow that is fully ripe in 
the month of May. 

SOME FACTS AND FIGURES WITH REFERENCE TO THE COST OF 
PRODUCING SILVER IN COLORADO. 

Colorado produced in 1892 24,000,000 ounces of fine sil- 
ver, or over 58 per cent, of the total production of the 
United States. Of this 24,000,000 ounces, the two coun- 
ties of Lake and Pitkin produced over 40 per cent. 

In these two counties the mining districts of Leadville 
and Aspen are located, known to the world as the two larg- 
est silver producers of the present time. 

Reliable data regarding these two districts ought to fur- 
nish conclusions that would be beyond question as to the 
general cost of producing silver, for the reason that the 
quantity of mineral and conditions in these camps must give 
most favorable results to the mine owner. Leadville pro- 
duces gold, lead and copper as "by-products" of her silver 
mines, while Aspen's output is all silver, except a by-product 
of less than 7 per cent, in lead, and because of this differ- 
ence in the product of the two camps a comparison of the 
results is interesting. 

The history of Leadville as a silver camp began in 1879, 
and it appears by the certificate of the Clerk and Recorder 
of Lake County that from January i, 1879, to June, 1893, 
there were filed in Leadville district 19,449 locations of 
mining claims. The register of the United States Land 
Office certifies to the issuing of 3,803 patents in the Lead- 
ville district. 

By careful inquiry it is found that of these patented 
claims only 166 have produced ore which has been sold, and 
of these 166 not more than eighty-five can be said to have 
paid, in the sense of returning money expended, with any 
profit. 

The number of mines now paying (June i, 1893) does 
not exceed eighteen. These facts are from smelters', ore 

27 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

samplers' and ore buyers' records and from individual in- 
quiry, and are reliable. 

If we take the period of this history of the Leadville 
district, 1879- 1893 — fourteen years — and make up a state- 
ment of the business of the district as regards its mines, we 
should have undoubted results as to the cost of its silver and 
other ores. So, keeping to the record as closely as possible, 
we charge the district with cost of its 19,449 locations, as 
required by law, viz. : 

Each location, labor necessary for 
sinking discovery shaft and making 

location $100.00 

Survey for location. 10.00 

Recording certificate 1.50 

$111.50 

19,449 locations $2,167,563.00 

These figures, of course, exclude the labor and money of 
the prospector expended in searching for locations, and 
which would aggregate an amount largely exceeding the legal 
cost, as above set down. 

On the 3,803 patents, the statutory fees and expenses are 
on each patent: 

Fee of surveyor-general $30.00 

Fee for patent survey 75-00 

Fee for land office 10,00 

Fee for publishing notice 10.00 

Fee for drawing papers 25.00 

Fee for land, average eight acres 40.00 

$190.00 
3,803 patents. $722,570.00 

In this item the $500 worth of work which the law re- 
quires to be done on each claim before patent can be had is 
not charged, as account is hereafter taken of it 

28 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

To protect titles to locations the law requires that until 
patent issues there shall be performed $ioo worth of work 
on each claim in each year. 

Of the 19,449 locations, it appears that 25 per cent, are 
vaHd and subsisting at present time, on which annual assess- 
ment work ($icx)) for an average of ten years has been per- 
formed — 

Making total expenditure on this ac- 
count of $4,860,000.00 

Add cost of original location 2,167,563.00 

Add cost of patents 722,570.00 

Total $7,750,133.00 

The expenditure in prospecting and abandoned workings 
must remain wholly undetermined. Every one who has any 
knowledge of a mining camp, or who has been interested 
in mining enterprises, can testify to the large amount that 
has been expended and of which no account or record is kept, 
and it must ever remain an unknown sum to be added to the 
figures that may be closely ascertained. 

In Leadville the mining and smelting operations have been 
made matters of record, and tables have been compiled and 
published from year to year, based upon data obtained at the 
time from original sources, and this data shows that there 
has been paid out for — 

Labor in mines and smelters in the 

fourteen years (1879-1893) $70,268,640 

For lumber and timbers 7>955,ooo 

Coke 6,521,040 

Coal 7,028,520 

Charcoal 3,020,000 

Hardware and mining supplies 10,000,000 

Machinery 3,500,000 

Machine shop work 1,875,000 

Hauling ore 3,603,250 

$113,771,450 
29 



FLAIX ECONOMIC FACTS 

Adding cost of location, patent, and 

assessment work 7»750,i33 

Gives a total of. $121,521,583 

representing actual cost of discovery, location, patenting, 
operating, mining and smelting the ores of the Leadville dis- 
trict during the fourteen years of its history, no account 
being taken of the money invested in smelters in the district. 
Against this amount charge the district with the money 
received from its production of silver for the fourteen years, 



VIZ. : 





Ounces 


Av'ge price 


Money j 


Year. 


silver. 


per ounce. 


value. 


1879.... 


6,004,416 


$1.12 


$6,724,945.92 j 


1880. . . . 


. • 8,993,399 


1.14 


10,252,474.86 i 


1881.... 


7,162,909 


1. 13 


8,094,087.17 


1882.... 


• • 7,273,249 


I-I3 


8,218,771.37 I 


1883.... 


• . 9,590,172 


I.I I 


10,645,090.92 ! 


1884. . . . 


. . 7,078,951 


I.OI 


7,149,740.51 


1885.... 


. . 8,314,593 


1.06 


8,813,468.58 


1886.... 


. . 8,166,145 


.99 


8,084,483-55 


1887.... 


. . 7,148,968 


.97 


6,934,498-96 


1888.... 


. . 7,895,275 


•93 


7,342,605.75 . 


1889.... 


. . 8,596,034 


•93 


7,994,311.62 


1890 


. . 7,061,093 


1.04 


7,343,536.72 ^ 


1891 


• • 7,535,526 


.90 


6,781,973-40 


1892 


. . 6,676,686 


.86 


5,741,949.96 


Total. 


...$107,497,416 


$ 


110,121,939.29 



This total of yearly production (in ounces) is in excess 
of the figures given by the Director of the United States 
Mint, being derived from records of smelters, and probably 
includes some ores from mines outside of the Leadville dis- 
trict, which will explain the discrepancy. 

The total returns from yield of Leadville mines for the 
fourteen years in question, in gold, silver, lead and copper — 

Amount to the value of $179,710,207 

30 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

Deduct money value of silver product, 
figured on basis (New York quota- 
tions) of average yearly price of 
silver, less 5 per cent., as received 
by mine owners 104,615,842 



Leaves value of by-products. . $75,094,365 
So it appears — 

Total cost of production, fourteen 

years $121,521,583 

Less returns from silver produced. . . 104,615,842 



Would show a loss of $16,905,741 

But the by-products, gold, lead, copper, as above, give a 
net profit of $58,188,624, clearly demonstrating that if the 
Leadville district had been a producer of silver only, the 
money returned to the district would not have paid the cost 
of production on the basis of the prices received from the 
smelters, and the district was saved from loss by virtue of 
its incidental products of lead, gold and copper. 

If silver has been worth to the mines during these four- 
teen years its coin value, the district would have received, in 
round numbers, $131,500,000, or a profit on its silver produc- 
tion, provided no account is taken of the cost and expendi- 
ture in the district involved in "prospecting" and abandoned 
experiments. 

Again, if Leadville had only been a silver-producing camp, 
the same as Aspen, the cost of the total silver product would 
have been over $1.13 per ounce. 

ASPEN DISTRICT. 

A comparison of the data from the Aspen district with 
the foregoing is interesting and furnishes conclusions that 
cannot be denied. 

The following concise and explicit report, proceeding 
upon same lines as the Leadville data, can be fully substan- 
tiated by proofs in the hands of this committee : 

31 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS . 

Aspen, Col., July 27, 1893. 

Dear Sir — In response to your request for data regarding 
the cost of silver production in this county, a meeting of 
the principal mine owners and managers was held on the 
14th inst. A complete organization was effected, the county 
was districted, and committees, including about forty of the 
best-known of our citizens, were appointed to secure as com- 
plete and accurate data as possible. Blank forms for re- 
ports were printed and furnished, and notices were given 
out through the public press requesting accurate and prompt 
returns from all citizens in possession of the information 
desired, and the undersigned were appointed as a commit- 
tee to compile the statistics received and report the same. 

A strong interest in the work was manifested by all our 
citizens who are engaged in the mining industry, and a 
large number of reports have been submitted to the com- 
mittee. Many of these were authentic statements taken 
from book accounts, and others were reliable and conserva- 
tive estimates, prepared by persons in possession of a direct 
knowledge of the facts. All reports have been subjected 
to careful scrutiny by the committee and all the total num- 
ber received — 380 individual reports — were considered in 
the preparation of the results submitted. Necessarily, in 
the short time occupied in the collection of data, the sum- 
mary is incomplete in that a large number of properties 
upon which large sums have been expended in develop- 
ment without returns have not been considered from lack 
of reliable data. On the other hand, properties which have 
produced largely and at a profit are all included, as the 
books of accounts in such cases are easily accessible. It 
may be assumed, therefore, with entire safety that the ac- 
tual cost per ounce of silver produced in this district will 
be somewhat above the result of the calculations herewith 
submitted. 

A categorical answer of the questions submitted is as 
follows : 

The total number of lode locations to date in the Aspen 
district, as certified by the County Clerk and Recorder, is 
15,056. Of these, about fifty locations are at Independ- 
ence, and cover gold leads, leaving total number of silver 
lode locations, say, 15,000. 

32 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

The records of the County Clerk's office show the total 
number of patented claims at 1,037; deducting thirty-one 
patented gold claims leaves 1,006 patented silver lode claims. 

The number of patented and non-patented prodticers, in- 
cluding all claims which have shipped even one ton of ore, 
is ninety-eight. 

The number of profit-producing claims (or groups) is 
eighteen. 

The number of claims (or groups) now (June i) paying, 
ten. 

The total production of silver to July i, as returned by 
mine reports, is 34,689,451 ounces. Deducting 5 per cent, 
as the loss which ensues from smelting, leaves 32,954,978 as 
the net production in ounces. 

The total cost of production, as tabulated below, is $35,- 
380,507.22, or $1,074 per ounce. The items of cost included 
consist only of amounts paid for labor, supplies, plant, rail- 
road freight, smelter charges, and a sum of about $425,000 
paid out in litigation expenses. 

Purchase price interest and the cost of the construction of 
tramways, roads and public power plants, etc., are not in- 
cluded. 

It will be seen that of the whole number of 15,000 loca- 
tions but 380 cases are reported. After careful considera- 
tion and consultation with the mining engineers and others 
who possess special knowledge upon the point, it is assumed 
in this report that each location was made at an average 
cost of $100 for labor, $12.50 for surveying and $2.50 for 
recording, or $115 per claim. From the same source of in- 
formation the conclusion is drawn that of the original num- 
ber of 15,000 locations, 6,500 are now live claims, and that 
an average of not less than eight years' annual labor has 
been performed on each, amounting to a total expense of 
$800 per claim. From actual measurement by the deputy 
mineral surveyor of development work performed upon the 
patented claims of the district, it is ascertained that the aver- 
age cost per claim exceeds $1,200. Other expenses of ob- 
taining patent are conservatively estimated at $200, making a 
total cost to each patented claim of, say, $1,400. 

From these estimates the following table is derived : 

33 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

15,000 locations, at $115 each $1,725,000.00 

1,006 patents, at $1,400 each 1,408,400.00 

6,500 /'Hve claims," at $800 each. . . 5,200,000.00 

380 claims reported 27,047,107.22 

$35,380,507.22 

Total number of ounces silver produced .... 32,954,978 
Cost per ounce, $1,074. 

It may be proper to state further that the reliance of the 
mines of this district is upon the production of silver alone. 
A few of the mines produce lead, the total amount received 
for that metal by the mines of the district being estimated 
at less than $4,000,000, no account of which is made in the 
figures above presented. No gold or copper is found in the 
ore. Respectfully submitted, 

Fred G. Bulkley, 
William J. Cox, 
S. I. Hallett, 

Committee. 
Approved : 

David R. C. Brown, 

Chairman. 
Elias Cohn, 

Secretary. 
F. T. Freeland, 

D. M. Hyman, 
F. M. Coombs, 

E. M. Ray, 

D. W. Brunton, 
Frank Bulkley, 

(Here follows certificate of County Clerk as to number of 
locations and patented claims.) 

Attention is also directed to the fact that, neglecting one 
of Aspen's mines of phenomenal richness, the totals given 
would be as follows : 

Total cost .... $33,908,508.81 

iotal ounces silver produced 26,524,843 

Cost per ounce, $1.23. 

34 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

Neglecting three principal producers will give the follow- 
ing figures: 

Total expense $26,091,381.00 

Total ounces silver produced 12,696,496 

Cost per ounce, $2.36. 

Fred G. Bulkley, 
William J. Cox, 
S. I. Hallett. 

SUMMARY. 

Leadville, fourteen years : 

Total locations ^9A99 

Total patents 3*803 

Total "live claims" 4,874 

Total claims that have produced ore. 166 

Total claims that have paid 85 

Total claims now paying 18 

Production, ounces silver 107,497,416 

By-products of silver mines, gold, 

lead, copper $75,094,365.00 

Expenditure of district $121,521,583.00 

Cost per ounce if there had been no by-product, $1,13. 

Aspen, eight years : 

Total locations 15,000 

Total patents 1,006 

Total "live claims" 6,500 

Total claims that have produced ore. 98 

Total claims that have paid 18 

Total claims now paying 10 

Production, ounce silver 32,954,978 

By-products of silver mines, lead 

only, something less than $4,000,000.00 

Expenditures of district $35,380,507.22 

Cost per ounce if there had been no by-product, 
$1,074. 

It should be remembered in offering any reports or quota- 
tions we consider it incumbent on any one dealing with such 

35 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

subjects as affect the economic conditions that surround us, 
in the age in which one writes, that note should be taken and 
contrast made between conditions and all those things such 
as electric cage-hoists, lighting, pumping, ventilating and 
other operations, perhaps all made possible by simply arrest- 
ing the neighboring stream, heretofore carelessly wandering 
to at leisure, add its mite to the already wondrously mighty 
and wealthy waters versus the shoulder-sacked slave, slowly 
and sullenly ascending log-notched ladders from the slimy, 
sombre, rosin-lit caverns below. We find in De 1' Mar's 
"Cost, Production and Relative Value of Silver" that, "Even 
at the present day, when to man's labor is added the enor- 
mous power of steam machines, such as winders or bolsters, 
pumps, drills, stamp mills, etc., the cost of getting gold and 
silver, on the average throughout the world, is far in excess 
of its value." 

The average cost of mining, smelting and refining the 
product of one ton of silver ore may be laid down at $i6 — 
$3.50 for mining, which ranges from 60 cents to $18 and 
upwards; $3 for freight, which ranges from forty cents to 
$9 and upwards per ton; $7.50 for smelting or through 
the metallurgy of lead, which ranges from $2 or less to $20 
and upwards. By stating $2 or less we are fully aware of 
the fact that a ton of what is known as neutral ore cannot 
be smelted for less than $4.50 at the very lowest, and that, 
under the most favorable conditions as to supplies and labor, 
etc. 

Without going into any elaborate tables or formulas we 
will plainly state that ore, to be smelted profitably, must 
contain something like the following proportion of the fol- 
lowing elements, although there are several formulas: It 
must contain silica oxide, 2 ; iron oxide, calcium oxide (av- 
erage lime rock, containing about 50 per cent.), and lead in 
this proportion or somewhat similar, 33. 33. 23. 10-12; as 
it is almost impossible to find this combination, which may 
be called a neutral ore, in ores, a mixture has to be made 
of the different qualities, so that some ores carrying a large 
per cent, of lime, iron or lead, which would be termed neu- 
tral ores also, the cost of smelting is lowered to the ovv^ner 
by the smelter in a bonus-like way, as the smelter must have 
such elements as a flux for the reduction of other rebellious 

36 



PLAIX ECONOMIC FACTS 

or refractory ores, the owner of which latter ores has to 
pay such bonus, which is added to the cost of the treatment 
of his ores — that is why we set it at $2 or less. 

Allowing $1 for extracting the silver from the base bul- 
lion at the refinery and $1.50 as interest on capital invest- 
ed in the property, machinery and all appliances, makuig 
$16.50, or more than the average ore is worth, icckoning 
silver at $1 per ounce, though sometimes the deficiency is 
made up by what is known as a by-product, such as gold, 
copper or the lead contents, but none of the other ingredi- 
ents of the combination, such as silica, lime, sulphur, zinc, 
iron, etc., are ever recovered. 

Being unable to unearth any cogent reason for ascribing 
to gold more than one cherubic chemical intrinsic quality 
over silver, which is offset by other qualities of silver, and 
consequently not being consistently fortified with any more 
plausible excuses, still we will exercise our supreme gall 
and . pronounce gold to be of twice the intrinsic value of 
that of silver, and, may we add, that we are prompted 
or tempted to do so purely and simply out of respect for our 
affable and gentlemanly neighbors, but we feel guilty when 
we reflect that the nude facts will not support our deliber- 
ate though dishonest magnanimity, yet always remembering 
that we are of age, and therefore personally responsible to 
society for all such transgressions against verity. And be- 
fore entering the gate to the field of medicine we are 
tempted to give our individual opinion why gold should be 
appreciated somewhat more than silver, and it is not for the 
sound, material reason that by its aid the artist may uninter- 
ruptedly proceed, depicting in seductive colors his imaginary 
idol, or perhaps desecrating, with his sheer mockery or 
mimicry, the sublime works of nature for to receive the 
adulation of the asinine aulic, aesthetic acaridse. 

Our reason simply springs from the promptings or sug- 
gestions of our inner soul, ever adoring its heaven-divined 
mate, woman; ever unceasingly endeavoring to have her 
most aerial, fleeting thoughts crystallized into universal cer- 
tainties, that we raise our feeble voice for that protection 
to gold required to keep afloat her magnetic powers of fas- 
cination, of which the sole element being its fabulous cost. 

37 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

Ah ! where in all creation is the callous-brained egotistic phil- 
osopher presumptive enough to deem himself competent, with 
a microscopic degree of approximate certainty, of judging 
what longevity and rejuvenating-producing, intrinsic pow- 
ers given, through that self -approving mind, to the very 
plain woman believing herself beautified, by the enchanting 
glitter of the rings in her ears (not in her nose, as you 
thought I was about to say) the lover-enslaving chain around 
her neck, or the snake-like, seductive garter buckle? Ah! 
little does such a philosopher appreciate the.wondrotis weak- 
ening of the knees of the tight-panted dude across the street, 
or the maudlin, irresistible, enchanting attraction that drags 
him across through the mud, or in what a dazed condition, 
with the shades of her early departed and divorced hus- 
bands, he follows her through the park ! Or, did such a one 
imagine, how poorly he can relatively compare the force of 
such a thought of self-satisfaction — to woman — was he 
aware of the fact that such a thought is chiefly instrumental 
in bringing back that brunette hue of youth to the gray hairs 
even within an ace of the roots! Did he, indeed? Then it is 
reasonable to suppose he would go bag his head before at- 
tempting his scurrilous defamation of gold ! To attempt to 
meditate on this intrinsic power or value of gold causes the 
most courageous to consider himself only endowed with such 
insignificant reasoning powers that, without seeking any fur- 
ther expressive logic, he simply says: "Well, it beats all!" 
Yes, it beats Bill Jones, and that ever-truthful commodity, 
Everybody, says Bill Jones beats the devil! 

Silver as a medicine! It was for a time abused in the 
treatment of epilepsy and given in such quantities as to cause 
the innocent, suffering victim to turn a dark-blue color, or 
silver-sulphide, like Wilkie Collins's hero. It is used as an 
injection for private diseases — not often discussed in select 
society. It is used extensively as a caustic. Homoeopathists 
use it extensively in nervous and brain diseases, and in dis- 
eases of the hver. But the dose they generally prescribe for 
an adult would not make a respectable mote for the junior- 
eye of a mosquito, while the regular school physician will 
order for his patient a good-sized, cart-wheel, honest dollar ! 
But both schools of medicine are at a loss to know— and 

38 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

are inordinately anxious and unremitting in their endeavors 
to unravel the mystery — as to whether it is the honesty or 
the dollar that does the renovating, side-act business. Silver 
is used as a. medicine in the form of a nitrate, and also metal- 
lic, but supposed to be changed in the system by the chlorine 
and sodium in the blood. It is found in great, boulder-like 
chunks in the blue blood of divine-right idiots. (But the 
only medical authority for this is Dr. O. E. Cornelius. 
— Author.) 

Nickel has not been found native. It is found mineralized 
by, or associated with, sulphur, arsenic and antimony, also 
with bismuth and cobalt ores and magnetic pyritees. It is 
also found alloyed with iron in meteors, sometimes being as 
high as 20 per cent, of the meteor's composition. It is silver- 
white in color. It fuses easier than iron. Carbonic oxide 
changes it, and other acids. It dissolves in aqua regia, as 
does gold. Its specific gravity is about 8^, and, as it does 
not tarnish or oxidize by exposure, it possesses the same 
intrinsic qualities for use as tokens of legal tender as gold 
or silver. Its volume in nature, so far as determined, is 
about the same as silver, or about thirty times that of gold, 
on account of its lighter gravity than silver. There has not 
been much attention paid to it until recently. It is now used 
as an alloy of what is known as nickel-steel, on account of 
its great resistance to force, when alloyed with iron or other 
metals, which property gold does not possess. It is superior 
to steel for the manufacture of philosophical instruments, as 
it does not so attract the magnet like steel. 

In China it is used as an alloy for coins and is prohibited 
from being carried out of the Empire, where it is called 
tutenague, but it is smuggled into the Indies, where it is 
called packfong. It is of different mixtures, or combina- 
tions, the average being, according to Dr. Fyfe and M. Meu- 
rer, copper, 52.82; zinc, 22.46; nickel, 22.3; iron, 1.3; silver, 
1.25. It is called white copper; it has the color of silver, 
and is remarkably sonorous. Several European countries 
have used nickel as an alloy for coins. The above combina- 
tion has an excellent metallic ring or jingle, not at all like 
the coins used in the United States, Switzerland, Belgium, 
Jamaica, etc. In some countries the alloy is called argentan 

39 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

or German silver. The combination is generally unlike in all 
countries. . 

Its value in China in recent years has been thirty-five cents 
per ounce, or one-fourth that of silver, its commercial value 
in the United States being below $i per pound; but if it was 
granted a letter of license and clothed with full legal tender 
intrinsic value and free coinage of about 371 grains to the 
dollar, it would be worth $1.30 per ounce the world over, or 
why not make 23.2 grains of nickel constitute $i, the same 
as gold, and by magic cause its 'intrinsic value to equal $20 
per ounce? The reason is this— because there is a larger 
volume of the metal in nature, which would furnish to man 
a nearer adequate and commensurate supply to carry on 
trade and commerce, without being forced to borrow from 
banks and thus compelled to pay an unrighteous interest 
for the use of the common public property, the national cir- 
culating medium. 

It is used for electroplating other metals to prevent their 
oxidizing or rusting, similarly with gold and silver. But, on 
account of the prescriptive value of gold, we will in this case 
be as sublimely presumptive as we were in setting a compara- 
tive intrinsic value between gold and silver, and hereby place 
gold at three times that of the intrinsic value of nickel. 

Copper occurs native, containing more or less silver gener- 
ally, and combined or mixed with oxygen, sulphur, selenium, 
arsenic, antimony, chlorine, carbon, phosphorous and zinc, 
and, like silver and nickel, is principally found around or 
among igneous rocks, which fact promises assurance of its 
stability. It is ductile, malleable and sectile and about the 
same hardness as silver, and somewhat harder than gold, and 
by the alloy of 10 per cent, of nickel, v/hich prevents its 
corrosion or oxidation, it is competent to serve for all the 
monetary purposes of legal tender as well as gold or silver. 

It dissolves in nitric acid, like silver. Its weakness in 
resisting air, moisture and acids is greatly recompensed for 
by its strength and durability, and the ease with which it may 
be alloyed with other metals, or either coating it with nickel, 
silver, gold, platinum, etc., then for all practical purposes 
it can and does take the place of all other metals which, from 
their small volume, could not be spared or procured to take 

40 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

the place of or substitute copper, while, when coated, it can 
take the place of nearly all other metallic elements. 

It is alloyed with zinc to compose brass thus : Copper, 
ranging from 60 to 85 per cent.; zinc, 15 to 38 per cent; 
lead, o to 2 per cent. For bronze, which fairly resists oxi- 
dation or rust, thus : Bronze medals, copper, 93 per cent. ; 
tin, 7 per cent. Speculum metal, copper, 60 per cent.; tin, 
30 per cent. ; arsenic, 10 per cent. For statues, copper, 82 
per cent. ; tin, 2 per cent. ; zinc, 16 per cent. The best cast- 
ing, copper, 91.4 per cent. ; zinc, 5.53 per cent.; tin, 1.7 per 
cent.; lead, 1.37 per cent. Again, for bronze, copper, 90 per 
cent. ; aluminum, 10 per cent. 

From the above and from the general uses to which copper 
is put, which is known to every one, it may be readily seen 
and safely concluded that copper and gold, as metals, differ 
only in an infinitesimally small degree in their relative in- 
trinsic values, for copper can be employed in all practical 
uses and more than that to which gold can be put, as, for in- 
stance, gold and silver alone will not form a hard alloy, while 
copper and silver will, as you can find and see and feel in our 
coin-silver dollar, which contains 10 per cent, copper, some- 
what similar with the hardness of our copper cent, adopted 
in 185 1, which contained 10 per cent, of nickel. We see also 
by the above that copper alloys with, or combines with, a 
great many metals, several others not here mentioned, and 
several minerals or elements with which gold will not com- 
bine. 

Its specific gravity is nearly 9, or a little less than one- 
half that of gold. It is the best-known conductor of elec- 
tricity in the metallic world. It is used as money by nearly 
every civilized nation in the world, in some form or other. 
In contrast with gold, its one lacking quality is its non-resist- 
ance to acids, and consequently unused in their distillation, 
except when gilt. On account of the assistance it requires 
from other metals to prevent its deterioration by acidic 
elements, it will be reasonable to allow it — that is to be con- 
sistent with our previous presumption — only the one-fourth 
of the intrinsic value of gold, with gold as the basic stand- 
ard one ; in other words, accrediting gold with four times 
the intrinsic value of a similar weight of copper. The an- 

4T 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

nual product of copper is about 175,000 tons; gold, 250 
tons. 

Copper as a medicine. — It is one of the three great epi- 
demic remedies of Rade Macher of the old alchemistic school. 
Nowadays the regulars call it a tonic in small doses, some- 
times used in the form of sulphate, as an emetic, also in 
the form of bluestone as a caustic. The homoeopathists use 
it in a great variety of convulsive disorders, in pneumonia, in 
green sickness or chlorosis. Hahnemann first used it for 
Asiatic cholera. Rade Macher set off epidemic cycles, say, 
of eighteen months, divided into three parts — one a copper, 
one iron, one arsenic. In the copper period copper was ad- 
ministered in all sicknesses and diseases; when the iron 
period was on, iron was prescribed, and so on. These are the 
only three remedies known to arrest epidemics such as chol- 
era, etc. Aside from the impossibility of man's existence 
without iron, who can judge of the manifold medicinal, in- 
trinsic values or virtues of copper and iron, taking gold, as 
the unit or basis? But all qualified authorities agree that 
copper and iron have more curative virtues or properties 
than gold has, yet all of either, except iron, are but supposi- 
tion. Oh ! shade of Paterson the Pirate ! How will we find 
some more immanent or intrinsic value for gold ? 

Iron occurs native and is found in meteoric iron, so-called, 
alloyed with nickel ; it is a very abundant ore or metal, being 
calculated to form from the 1/7 to the i/ii of the entire 
solid crust of the earth, or inorganic matter. Iron has been 
known from the earliest historic period, but not much in use 
until some 2,000 years ago, the ancient Greeks using- it as 
weapons of war, as they had by this time cast aside the 
jawbone of an ass. It is malleable and ductile, but, of 
course, not to such an eminent degree as silver, platinum 
or gold. The gravity of iron is nearly 8, and its hardness 
about 43/2, or, in a geometrical ratio, about four times the 
force-resisting power of gold. By infusing carbon into it at 
a certain degree of temperature, which cannot be done with 
gold, it becomes steel, which, when properly tempered by 
immersing it when at certain heats into a cold bath of water 
and oil, it attains a hardness of 8, or superior to platin- 
iridium, or iridosmine, which latter metals thus alloyed have 
a hardness of 7, but a specific gravity of 22. Generally the 

42 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

harder the metal the less malleability, but not always just as 
the softer with the accompaniment of density — that is, the 
closeness of its atonic or molecular arrangement with flexi- 
bility, the more malleability, ductility and sectility. 

Iron's poor resistance to acids, air or moisture would with 
some superficial, or light-weight, or chaffy economists place 
it down in the scale of intrinsic value in a comparative way, 
but the impossibility of man's existence, as well as all other 
animals, without it, places it inestimably in advance and pre- 
eminently at the head of all other metals combined, in regard 
to intrinsic value, so that the theoretical and legendary non- 
sense and craze about the intrinsic value of gold fades into 
an aerified gas of the wildest, hair-brained speculation or 
imagination, when compared to the absolute and realistic 
proof of the value of iron. 

Iron has been widely used as money, for which use it is 
peculiarly adapted, as we may judge from our bunch of keys, 
knife or buttonhook carried in the pocket, on account of its 
durability, its indestructibility by fire, and its susceptibility to 
perfect impressions when hot ; but it is not adapted for the 
purpose of the miser we read about, who hoards his money 
and buries it in damp ground, for in some 200 years the 
evidence of its legal tender quality, stamped thereon in con- 
formity with the law regulating the volume and value of 
tokens and rendering it obligatory on the creditor to receive 
them in payment of all debts or forfeit the right of collec- 
tion, might by that time be effaced, and his mother-in-law's 
posterity would have nothing left, probably, but iron oxide 
or red iron ore, and would consequently be put to the ex- 
pense of smelting it over and having it stamped again, which 
expense in itself would be sufficient to condemn to the most 
condign contumely any calamity howler who could consist- 
ently advocate the use or reissue of iron as money. 

The only plausible reason that can be given why iron is 
not adopted as the only metal to coin tokens of legal tender 
money from by government is the supposed trouble arising 
from the possible or probable inability of government to 
regulate its volume, as the volume of the metal in nature 
would enable the individual so disposed to procure it by 
weight at probably 100 times less than that of its coin value, 

43 . 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

and thereby be tempted to enter into its coinage in compe- 
tition with society that had regulated by law the per capita 
amount to be coined. But this objection holds good only 
in part, as we do not find much trouble from counterfeiting 
paper and have easily managed to keep such enterprise or 
industry in abeyance. 

Now, if it is necessary to have a metal for money of the 
highest intrinsic value to man, or the inhabitants of this 
planet, not Mars, iron is pre-eminently that metal, as any 
sane individual must admit that iron is of incalculably more 
benefit and intrinsic value to man than all other metals corn- 
bined. So we do hope to hear no more of the intrinsic 
value of money, except from those to whom God has allotted 
no more sense than geese, whose gosling gabble we some- 
times hear of as being advertised in the daily dodgers, sar- 
castically called the press, the goslings being generally styled 
"our own correspondent," "people's voice," and "all-around 
reporters," 

Who run up and down the street, interviewing noble gan- 
ders ; 

It seems their sole ambition is appointment as their panders, 

But to whose mamas' credit the fact we must here and now 
adduce. 

Indeed she's not at all aware that her young are running 
loose. 

Iron as a medicine. — The uses and abuses of iron are well 
known by the laity, with or without medical advice, as they 
will take it until their stomachs rebel and their digestions 
sometimes utterly destroyed under the mistaken notion that 
they have to take heroic doses in order to tone up their blood 
or blood-discs, hsemi or blobeen, while it is well known that 
there is not sixty grains of metallic iron in the blood of a 
healthy adult, or not the weight of fifteen cents in silver. It 
is One of the three great epidemic remedies of Rade Macher. 
It is used in a great variety of diseases in the form of Chalyb- 
eate, or mineral waters impregnated with iron. It is one of 
the mainstays of ancient balneology. Its use by the homoeop- 
athists is mostly symptomatic, that some deranged form 
of the condition of the blood, is its main indication. Iron, 

44 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

indeed, must be the medicine, the metal, or the money of 
the virtuous for, not Hke gold, it, is aggravating in all forms 
of syphilis, and is therefore a burning curse to the base, 
licentious profligate, while it establishes for the worthy youth 
vim, vigor and virtue. Oh, Fate ! can you not conjure up 
some more intrinsic attributes for gold and bring it within 
the thunder-distance of man's cheap money metal, iron? 

The principal benefits to mankind which may be derived 
from the intrinsic properties of gold, which are its malle- 
ability and resistance to acids, supposed to be so highly 
prized in a scientific way, are curtailed and limited to an in- 
jurious degree solely by its use as money tokens, and, if for 
no other philosophical reason, it should be discarded as one 
of the materials of such tokens, particularly on account of 
its very limited volume. If its intrinsic qualities render it 
indispensable to scientists, and there being a statutory law 
forbidding the destruction or mutilation of coins, and that 
mankind would reap more and further benefits from its more 
extended use in the arts, why, then, not demonetize it 
and thereby make it more plentiful for the artisan and 
cheapen it for all mankind? For silver is known to exist in 
greater volume and to possess all the intrinsic qualities of 
gold necessary for a metal to possess in order to render its 
adoption desirable for coins. By adopting silver as the only 
metal from which to strike all legal tender coins in the 
future it might give reason to the scientist to rightfully and 
rapturously rejoice and a long-sought-for opportunity to the 
great majority of mankind to applaud. 

We are told by the intrinsic usurer not born with a caul 
over his head, but whose brain in the womb re- 
ceived the magical impression of "promise to pay," that sil- 
ver has lost its intrinsic properties, and that the Mogul of 
the Ainus has decreed them transferred to gold and brass. 
He also tells us that gold is becoming scarcer, and that we 
will have to issue five promises to pay a dollar on every gold 
dollar, the gold dollar to be the legal tender of the money 
loaner and our foreign customers and to be the basis of the 
promises, and the promises to be a legal tender for the 
laborer only. Indeed, he shifts around so it is rather difiicult 
to keep track of him, for he knows that all the gold in the 
world would not be sufficient as the only medium of ex- 

45 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS | 

change for the United States, yet he fails to suggest that 
we command four grains of gold, instead of 23.2, to be the 
unit measure of $1, while he knows that if any congress has 
the right or authority to pronounce 23.2 grains gold $1^ it 
must undeniably have the authority to decree that five grains 
shall constitute $10, or any other relative declaration. 

Really, it is not the value of gold, nor the value of silver 
or any other metal, that annoys the interest gatherer, nor 
neither would any skillful physician prescribe vermifuge, for 
his ailment, nor do flies distract him, but his whole soul is 
wrapped up in the one thought of how to make money scarce, 
which, of course, makes it dear, and all other commodities 
that it measures consequently cheap. By making it scarce 
its unnatural dishonest and unhallowed increment or inter- 
est — the curse of all creation — is proportionally increased, 
thereby enabling the usurer to rake in a larger tax or tithe 
from active industry, that produces all and incurs all risk en- 
countered in production, while the banker is made trebly se- 
cured before loaning the people their own medium of ex- 
change, that by unjust laws he has so arranged it as not 
only to possess an inordinate and unjust amount of it, but, 
in combination with his kind and by the aid of purchasable 
officials, he regulates the volume in circulation, and as a 
corollary also the interest or tax rate imposed on industrious 
society as well. 

When the circulating medium or volume of monetary 
measures is decreased, which correspondingly decreases the 
current prices of all other commodities, which must be meas- 
ured by it, great care is taken not to decrease the amount 
owned by those who deal in the works of shamelessly sav- 
age sociologic fiction, money on interest, but, on the con- 
trary, the interest is increased, as well as the purchasing 
power of the principal, as is well known to the most stupid 
that every decrease in the amount of circulation or increase 
of business or population ends in cheaper honor, virtue and 
realty. But we have yet to hear that the ludicrous experi- 
ment has as yet been tried, that is, the calling of all owners 
of real property (honor and virtue) of absolute necessity 
and intrinsic value to assemble at the Capitol, and there hear 
pronounced by the choice-wine-flavored-breath of a maudlin 
political-philanthropist the edict, I, Me, do now hereby de- 

46 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

cree, that thenceforth and during my pleasure, that the in- 
trinsic value or virtue of all real commodities, etc., shall 
increase in a just and meet degree proportionally, as I, me, 
have caused to increase the purchasing power of its savage- 
divined measure. 

He who advocates the policy that gold should be the sole 
standard or measure of values either exhibits or exposes his 
total ignorance of the proper use or function of money, or 
the prescriptive valuation of all property, or else he estab- 
lishes unmistakeable evidence of his fiendish depravity. Let 
us examine the standard he would set up for this great 
American people, were there none else in the world. 

In January, 1893, the whole existing stock of gold in the 
whole world was but seven and one-half billion dollars, or 
$7,610,000,000 used as coin and in every other form. It would 
just require three times that amount to pay our recorded 
debt, besides that of private debts among individuals. On 
that date, and now, the total valuation of the United States 
is computed at far more than eighty billion dollars, and the 
annual production valued at twenty-two billion dollars, so 
the total valuation should be ten times the latter amount, or 
two hundred and twenty billion dollars, and the annual in- 
crease is valued as fifteen billion dollars, so our yearly in- 
crease alone could not be purchased for less than twice as 
much gold as exists in the arts and as money in the entire 
nations of the earth. 

And if every actual producer in the United States could 
for one year save up one-third of his production, or one-half 
the increase of wealth and entertain a righteous fear of 
those gambling dens, the banks and like institutions, and keep 
his money for the year, there would not be gold enough to 
pay for all in the whole world, without taking all plate and 
jewelry, even to ladies' garter-snake buckles and shimmering 
shirt studs, putting all into the crucible and coining them. 
Of course, such a thing would be well-nigh impossible, as so 
much money would be drawn from circulation that purchas- 
ers with the ability and willingness to buy and pay for it 
could not be found, as they could not borrow the money, no 
matter how valuable their property might be. And the rest 
of the world would find themselves compelled to take from 

47 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

its hermitage to enjoy once again the Hght of day that ''Let- 
ter of License." (See paragraph 446, on national banks.) 

We find on the same date that all the silver in the world 
was only nine billion dollars, both coined and otherwise, 
or between gold and silver about enough to pay for one 
year's increase. The absurdity of the claim that there is 
gold enough to carry on the commerce or business of the 
world, even to a blind man, is plainly apparent, whether you 
choose to wink or nod at him, for he knows that the world's 
total stock of gold coins is but $3,700,000,000, the remaining 
four billion dollars plate, jewelry, etc., while there are about 
1,500,000,000 population, or an allowance to each person of 
$2.46 per capita per annum, to purchase and pay for the 
average $120 worth that each one is supposed to consume. 
With the silver added, which is a little more than the gold, 
according to the most reliable statistics, although United 
States Treasury and Mint reports are included, amounting 
to four billion dollars in coin, the balance, five billion dollars, 
in plate, jewelry, etc., so that with gold and silver coin each 
of the inhabitants of the world would just have about $5 
per capita to purchase all his wants and for the payment of 
all his past debts. So we see that, even with the free coin- 
age of gold and silver, it would yet be a tough scheme for 
him to ever get down to a cash basis, as they have now in 
France. 

Let us see how it is with the American. All the gold in 
the treasury, banks, in circulation and hoarded away (United 
States Mint report, August 16, 1893), is but $9.01 per cap- 
ita, but it is not that now, on account of increase of popula- 
tion and the amount since exported to pay our debts, which 
never had a right to exist, if our misnamed statesmen were 
patriotic and knew the A, B, C of finance ; but each individ- 
ual would have about $9 gold to pay for his average con- 
sumption of at least $300 worth of food, raiment, etc., for, 
according to United States statistics, in 1892 our total agri- 
cultural production amounted to twelve billion dollars, our 
factory productions eight and one-half billion dollars, allow- 
ing for all other hand-labor productions, etc., only two billion 
dollars, and only one billion dollars of all this exported; 
we consumed the rest, and more, for we imported about as 
much, if not more, than we exported. Besides providing for 

48 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

this $300 worth, the poor $9 would, somehow, have to ar- 
range for the average $220 of annual increase in imperish- 
able improvements, etc. 

As the circulation is now (August, 1893), with $9 gold, 
$9.18 silver, and $6.15 paper, total $24.34 per capita, as 
against $24,68 April i, 1892. Counting the amount in the 
treasury and the reserve in banks, would leave about $11 
per capita in actual circulation for the producer to procure 
his average $520 worth of what he consumes, and in wealth 
accumulates, so he must be a very stupid monstrosity, on 
being convinced of this, that would wonder at our regular 
and methodical panics, or wonder why it is that interest is 
so high, garnering annually more than one-tenth of every- 
thing produced, or why it is that both the ranks are increas- 
ing in inverse ratio, of the robbing millionaire and the 
robbed tramp, under sanction of imp-evolved law. 

We are told that we cannot have the free coinage of 
silver — they are now dropping the intrinsic value racket — 
they say, because its commercial value in the markets of the 
world is steadily decHning. Can this be from its increased 
production in the past half a century? It cannot be, for the 
twenty years from 1853 ^o 1^73 there was $i,zi4 1,000,000, 
and from 1873 to 1892, $236,000,000 more gold produced 
in the world than silver, and from 1873 to 1893 there was 
but $190,000,000 more silver produced than . gold in the 
United States, leaving $1,487,000,000 of a gap for silver to 
jump over, for which it would take eighteen years if there 
was not another dollar more of gold produced in the world, 
or, figuring at the same ratio of increase for the last twenty 
years of $9,500,000 per anuum, it would require that steady 
increase, or the same amount, for a period of almost 162 
years, for silver to gain what it lost from 1853 to 1873. 

But is it not remarkable to see the inconsistency of our 
would-be financiers and note them selling out their country, 
just at the close of that twenty-year period, when silver had 
lost so much in the race of production, and demonetize it, 
just because it was getting scarce? The question here pre- 
sents itself to our mind. Will ever the American writer be 
endowed with such descriptive powers as to ever adequately 
portray, in proper denunciatory terms, the base perfidy and 

49 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

treason of those who consummated that dastardly act of 
robbery on the American people ? Just think of it ! Done 
for the miserable sum of half a million, and by those, some 
of whom are now, to the nation's disgrace, yet active in the. 
merchantable ranks of the political arena. The uncontra- 
dictory answer is, if the transmigration of souls from an- 
cestor to future generations be correct, and the soul in- 
creases in ludicity and power in the ratio of the cube of 
generations, then the tenth generation of Victor Hugo might 
do feeble justice in describing the unprecedentedly infernal 
crime. That crime, committed at the instance of the prin- 
cipal banks or bankers of England and our own country, 
who set themselves the task to do so in order to reduce the 
legal tender money of the world and thereby render their 
speculations more profitable, as well as to reduce the cur- 
rent price of the necessaries of life, which England is com- 
pelled to purchase from outsiders, in order to even hazard- 
ously exist and be numbered among nations, whose right of 
existence is based solely on connivance, hollow pride and 
egotism. 

From 1792 up to 1834 our ratio was, with equal terms of 
coinage for gold and silver, fifteen ounces of silver to one 
ounce of gold. Some goldites or monometallists sciy that 
that law did not make fifteen ounces of silver worth one 
ounce of gold, and that gold left the country ; the latter part 
of the assertion is true, but let us see why it left. The 
French ratio was then and since fifteen and one-half ounces 
of silver to one of gold, so that a merchant or any other 
raking one ounce of gold from this country got fifteen and 
one-half ounces of silver to pay his debts with in Europe, 
both gold and silver being then full legal tender ; but if he 
brought fifteen ounces of silver he would find himself 
short one-half ounce of the price of one ounce of gold in 
that country, and as a matter of business he sent, or brought, 
that commodity — gold — that brought the largest price, or 
fifteen and one-half ounces silver, instead of fifteen. The 
French ratio then governed all European markets. But in 
the United States both were interchangeable and full legal 
tender, and one ounce of gold could only purchase fifteen 
ounces of silver. 

Again, the gold bug, in hunting around for some excuse 

50 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

to hide his nefarious designs, in order to make it appear that 
the money question is one of abstract science, although it 
is universally known that such .is not the case, and that any 
one paying the attention to it that they ought, or that it 
deserves, that they will find it as easily reasoned out as that 
two and two make four, although that the money-loaning 
monsters generally endeavor to surround it with all the 
mysteries of Beelzebub, so that the producer might be de- 
terred from inquiring into the fiendish methods by which 
he is robbed. But the money-monger exposes his duplicity 
and divarications when he tells us that • when we changed 
our ratio from fifteen to one to sixteen to one that that 
law did not make one ounce of gold worth sixteen ounces of 
silver, and that the gold remained and that the silver left the 
country. See how he whips around the stump: Would it 
not remind you of the little, innocent story of the cat and 
the fox? Let us see about bringing the gentleman to bay 
before we get through with him. In the United States 
while that law existed sixteen ounces of silver could always 
be bought for one ounce of gold, and no more, up to 1873, 
but, as we have remarked before, the French or European 
measure of the metals was fifteen and one-half ounces silver 
to one ounce of gold. So that wath one ounce of gold the 
merchant could here obtain sixteen ounces of silver, which 
he brought or sent to Europe, and was only required to 
give fifteen and one-half ounces of it for one ounce of gold, 
and one-half ounce thereby was saved to him as profit. 
This is why the silver left the country, and this is why that 
it is as plain as the rum-blossom that adorns the average 
a-ctive financier's nose. 

The only factor that gave or gives either gold or silver 
9999 9/10 of its present or past commercial value is, and 
was, the law .only, for through its agency or mandate it not 
only creates that continuous and absorbing use for it through 
free coinage, which privilege men and nations will ever avail 
themselves of, whenever purchasable politicians will admit, 
until the world can transact its business on a cash basis, but 
it also defines and establishes its fixed measure of value, 
only as regulated each metal or money by the other in a 
certain ratio, or by giving a specified measure or weight or 
numerical description, a verbal, imprinted or nominal value, 

51 



. PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

either or all endowed with similar numerically regulated 
functions, both singly and collectively, as the case may be, 
but universally without any counter check or standard of all, 
or any, of the commodities of indispensable necessity for 
human existence, therefore estabhshing money the arbitrary 
regulator of all real values, which latter must per conse- 
quent depend on the numerical or volumetric force, strength 
or amount of the former to capriciously determine the lat- 
ter's current prices, without regard to their undeniable labor 
cost, and fully known and demonstrated worth and indis- 
pensable necessity. 

So that when money is plenty or cheap all other commodi- 
ties will sell for more of that money, whether it be legal ten- 
der or promise to pay, than when money is scarce or dear, 
when all other commodities sell for less of it, for they are, 
and must be, measured by the .amount in circulation, as 
there is no other measure of value set on them, and that„ 
but in a headlessly indefinite way, nor as yet, no other way 
devised for measuring their value, which, in their normal 
condition, is as fixed and tangible a.s the universe. Since 
the amount in circulation determines in all cases the pro- 
portionate amount to be paid or received for all productions 
or services, it behooves us to see to it that we have that 
amount of absolute money — gold silver and paper — com- 
mensurate with our wealth and volume of business, say, 
one-tenth of our wealth, evidenced in the volume of legal 
tender tokens, and in a comparative proportion to the bal- 
ance of the world, particularly those countries with whom, 
unfortunately for us, we carry on trade or commerce. 

Money from the earliest dawn of history has been given 
fixed value as money by law, by some governments or coun- 
tries, which value measure was generally accepted by other 
countries, even when they had no such law or enactments 
of their own, as regulating the relative value as money of 
gold and silver, which had different regulations or values 
in different countries, according to their infantile or incipi- 
ent knowledge of finance or economy, or according to their 
beliefs in their idols or gods, as almost every known element 
or visible thing had a god of its own, so if they had 
a small amount of money in circulation — not like us now — 
they had plenty of gods that for them probably answered 

52 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

the same purpose, so we say either give us more gods or 
give us more money. 

For 2,200 years before Christ there was gold and silver 
money in China, some such silver coins being yet preserved, 
the inscription on which, when translated, reads, "Good for 
gold." The laws of India, fixing the relation between gold 
and silver, date back nearly 2,000 years before Christ. All 
the old philosophers were wont to declare silver the more 
stable metal of the two. Locke was a single silver standard 
man, as were all other intelligent men in all ages, with the 
exception of the professional money loaners and their satel- 
lites, and up to 1816 there was no nation in the world con- 
fined to a gold standard, until that year England stopped 
the free coinage of silver in the hope of making legal ten- 
der money scarce, and because she produced little or no 
silver; but she could not beat down its universal ratio of 
fifteen and one-half or sixteen to one until her agents 
bought out the right honorable scheming Jack & Co., 
who in the dark stealthily stabbed American prosperity by 
demonetizing silver in 1873, which action soon after caused 
France, or about that time, to close her mints also, but who 
alone up to that time for some years kept up the price of 
silver to her ratio of fifteen and one-half in Europe, despite 
the action of England, Germany and other nations in de- 
monetizing it, and no doubt France never would have closed 
her mints were it not for the surreptitious action of a dozen 
or more of unnatural American traitors, and this silver ques- 
tion would not now be agitating the world, or the treat- 
ment silver received, bringing destitution and its concomi- 
tants, vice, crime and suicide, to the homes of its countless 
millions, whose sufferings cry to heaven for vengeance to 
descend on the heads of the traitors ; and no wonder if those 
sufferers would join in prayer that the curse of the poet 
might descend on them and, even, though uncharitable, on 
their posterity, that, "man deny them succor, earth a home, 
and heaven its God." 

But now let us examine the question of value in the 
metals, or the regulation of the ratio between them, that 
the goldites would have us be guided by, or the laws on the 
subject that we are told we should conform to. As though 
the American people of to-day do not know more on the 

53 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

subject than those financiers that are continually quoted 
from in part to suit any case in point ; as though the steam 
printing press has not made it possible for the humblest in 
the land to thoroughly sift the collated knowledge of all 
those compelled, as it were, to grope in the light of a rosin- 
dip or a greased-rush and to add it to his electric experience 
of economic law in the past thirty-five years. 

The Encyclopaedia Britannica, Vol. XXIL, page 73, says : 
*'In Spain, by the edict of Medina (1497), the ratio was 
ten and three-fourths. When America was first plundered 
the first fruits were gold, not silver; whereupon Spain, in 
1546, and before the wealth of the silver mines of Potosi 
was known (mark you, the production of gold was then 
greatest!) raised the value of gold to thirteen and one-third 
(of silver to one part gold), and as Spain then monopolized 
the supply of the precious metals (about that ratio as the 
United States does now), the rest ,0/ the world was obliged 
to acquiesce in her valuation. During the following cen- 
tury Portugal obtained such immense quantities of gold 
from the East Indies, Japan and Brazil that the value of her 
imports of this metal exceeded £3,000,000 a year, whilst 
those of Spain had dwindled to £500,000 in gold and had 
only increased to £2,500,000 in silver. Portugal now gov- 
erned the ratio, and in 1688 raised the value of gold to six- 
teen times that of silver. Except during a brief period of 
forty years, this ratio has ever since been maintained in 
Spanish and British America and the United States. A cen- 
tury later the spoils of the Orient were exhausted, the Bra- 
zilian began to decline and Portugal lost her importance. 
Spain thus again got control of the ratio, and as her colonial 
produce was chiefly silver she raised its (silver's) value in 
1775 from one-sixteenth to one-fifteenth and a half (parts) 
that of gold for the Peninsula, permitting it to remain at 
one-sixteenth in the colonies. (Now, silver's production 
greatest, by law, advanced in price.) France, whose previ- 
ous ratio (that of 1726) was about fourteen and one-half, 
adopted the Spanish ratio of fifteen and one-half in 1785, 
and has adhered to it ever since. These three historical 
ratios, and the bearing of each upon the others, have influ- 
enced all legislation on the subject, and where tnere waf. 
no legislation have governed the bullion market tor inore 

54 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

than two centuries." Is this not Enghsh authority piovmg 
that it is the law only that fixes or establishes the price or 
value of money metals, and English authority that when the 
production of a particular metal was greatest that its price 
or value was advanced by law only? And proof that the 
theory of value or price arising from scarcity, coupled with 
desire, was denied, in the ancient laws that are gabbled so 
much about? When France in 1726 established the ratio of 
14.62 to I all the following countries had a different ratio, 
showing how little they knew about the economic regula- 
tions and consequent government of society that they as- 
sumed: Portugal, 14.4 to I ; China, 6 to i ; England, 15 to 
I ; Japan, 4 to i ; India, 10 to i, and other Asiatic countries 
from 8 to 10 to I. In 1785, when France changed her ratio 
to 15^ to I, we find England yet had 15 to i ; Portugal 
now 14 to I ; Spain, 16 to i, but gradually all nations con- 
formed to the French ratio of 15^ to i, that ratio being 
termed and known as the par of exchange. 

Then came the United States, in 1792, with a ratio of fif- 
teen to one. Then comes England, or, rather the Bank of 
England, in 1816, who pretends to her people that she pos- 
sessed a secret that no one but herself knew — that was that 
there was no intrinsic value in silver. So she stopped its 
coinage for her people, but as they could slip across the 
Channel and have it coined in France they have never be- 
lieved the story, as the plucky French have proved that in 
Europe, almost alone, she has been able to maintain its 
monetary price there, and in a great measure throughout 
the world, as has been acknowledged by the English Royal 
Commission, appointed in 1888 for the purpose of deter- 
mining the cause of the falling price of silver. In their 
report they attribute it "only to the suspension of coinage 
in 1873-4. Until France suspended coinage the variation in 
the price of silver did not average over five-eighths of one 
cent per ounce, and for 1874 only two and one-fourth cents." 
In 1847 the Netherlands adopted the silver standard. - 

Up to 1 87 1 England was alone in the world as a gold- 
standard country, when Germany came to her aid and in law 
declared her belief that there was no intrinsic value in silver. 
Still she has $103,000,000 full legal tender silver. But who 
would wonder at whatever she might say — a country that, 

55 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

in 1857, went so far as to pass a law demonetizing gold, then 
in fourteen years afterward to become so civilized as to 
knock silver over the ropes and show to the world that the 
value of money is a myth, and that' myth, vulgarly called, 
law. 

Even yet England, aided by Germany, could not beat down 
the price of silver, although France had not only, about this 
time, been compelled to recuperate from the effects of a 
desolating war, but to pay an indemnity or ransom, or, 
rather, purchase an evacuation of her soil by a victorious 
army of $1,000,000,000, which, to their credit and our rela- 
tive disgrace, they paid in an incredibly short time, having to 
do it but the one-half of our population and one-seventeenth 
of our territory. Well, they knew the voracity of the 
usurer ! 

Next Ernest Seyd came over to visit one John Sherman, 
and you know the rest. If not, read this, taken from the 
Bankers' Magazine of August, 1873 and copied from a Lon- 
don journal, and as yet uncontradicted: "In 1873, silver 
being demonetized in France, Holland and England, a capi- 
tal of $500,000 was raised, and Ernest Seyd, of London, 
was sent to this country with this fund, as agent of the for- 
eign bondholders and capitalists, to effect the same object 
(demonetization of silver), which was accomplished." And 
read this, taken from the Congressional Globe of 1872, page 
2304: "Ernest Seyd, of London, a distinguished writer 
and hulliolist, who is now here, has given great attention to 
the subject of mint and coinage. After having examined 
the first draft of this (for the demonetization of silver) 
bill, he m,ade various sensible suggestions, which the com- 
mittee adopted and embodied in the bill." In case you need 
any further proof to fasten heinous perfidy on a supposed 
American we will trespass on your patience by asking you 
to just read: 

HOW SILVER WAS DEMONETIZED. 

AN INTERESTING AFFIDAVIT. 

Mr. Frederick A. Luckenbach is a prominent citizen of 
Denver, Colorado. He is reliable and responsible, and is a 
former member of the New York Produce Exchange. 

56 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

In May, 1892, he made the following affidavit, now of 
special interest. We reproduce it, and will let the reader 
pass judgment on it. 

STATE OF COLORADO, 

County of Arapahoe, ss. : 

Frederick A. Luckenbach, being first duly sworn on oath, 
deposes and says : In the year 1865 I visited London, Eng- 
land, for the purpose of placing there Pennsylvania oil prop- 
erties in which I was interested. I took with me letters of 
introduction to many gentlemen in London — among them 
one to Mr. Ernest Seyd from Robert M. Foust, ex-treasurer 
of Philadelphia. I became well acquainted with Mr. Seyd 
and with his brother, Richard Seyd, who, I understand, is 
yet living. I visited London thereafter every year, and at 
each visit renewed my acquaintance with Mr. Seyd, and 
upon each occasion became his guest one or more times — 
joining his family at dinner or other meals. 

In February, 1874, while on one of these visits, and 
while his guest for dinner, I, among other things, alluded 
to rumors afloat of parliamentary corruption, and expressed 
astonishment that such corruption should exist. In reply 
to this, he told me he could relate facts about the corruption 
of the American Congress that would place it far ahead of 
the English Parliament in that line. So far, the conversa- 
tion was at the dinner table between us. His brother, Rich- 
ard, and others were there also, but this was table talk be- 
tween Mr. Ernest Seyd and myself. After the dinner ended 
he invited me into another room, where he resumed the 
conversation about legislative corruption. He said: "If 
you will pledge me your honor as a gentleman not to divulge 
what I am about to tell you while I live, I will convince you 
that what I said about the corruption of the American Con- 
gress is true." I gave him the promise, and he then con- 
tinued: "I went to America in the winter of 1872-3, au- 
thorized to secure, if I could, the passage of a bill demone- 
tizing silver. It was to the interest of those I represented — 
the governors of the Bank of England — ^to have it done. I 
took with me £100,000 sterling, with instructions if that 
was not sufficient to accomplish the object to draw for an- 

57 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

other £100,000 or as much more as was necessary." He 
told me German bankers were also interested in having it 
accomplished. He said he was the financial adviser of the 
bank. He said: "I saw the committees of the House and 
Senate and paid the money and stayed in America until I 
knew the measure was safe." 1 asked if he would give me 
the names of the members to whom he paid the money— 
but this he declined to do. He said : ''Your people will not 
nozu comprehend the far-reaching extent .of that measure — 
but they will in after years. Whatever you may think of 
corruption in the English Parliament, I assure you, I would 
not have dared to make such an attempt here as I did in 
your country." I expressed my shame to him, for my coun- 
trymen in our legislative bodies. The conversation drifted 
into other subjects, and after that— though I met him many 
times — the matter was never again referred to." 

(Signed) Frederick A. Luckenbach. 

Subscribed and sworn to before me at Denver, this ninth 
day of May, A.D., 1892. 

(Signed) James A. Miller, 

[seal.] Clerk Supreme Court, State of Colorado. 

On reading the above anyone with a spark of loyal 
love of country or liberty in his brain, or tint of patriotic 
blood in his veins, indeed, may well heave a sigh born of the 
puzzling query. What is the most ignominious punishment 
we should publicly inflict on the contemptible traitors, espe- 
cially the archscoundrel, who yet endeavor to deny and 
defend the act, unparalleled by the most profligate and de- 
based debaucher in the blackest annals of history? Indeed, 
well may the mind wander in a maze of wonder for some 
occult solution to explain the peculiar phenomenon or cause 
that force the human being to drop to such a shuddering 
depth of depravity and self-disgrace, and when well tired 
out, aimlessly chasing every phantom of the mortal imag- 
ination, we earnestly and thankfully feel relieved on being, 
by some subtle power that we cannot comprehend, forced to 
resolve within us that we must cease to meditate on those 
secret causes or divinely hidden reasons for visible or tangi- 

58 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

ble effects beyond our ken and ascribe them to the mysteri- 
ous ways of the Great Creator. For, on a little reflection 
in this case, is there not a plentiful supply of food for hum- 
ble and charitable thought? To our shallow senses do we 
not find two beings generated from the same mold and to 
all visible or human-realizing proof from similar procreant 
germs and, during the plasticity of the mind of youth, with 
similar moral, religious, secular and social training or educa- 
tion, leaving the impressions, according to human reason- 
ings and inferences, both to possess a large degree of har- 
mony and similitude, instead of absonance and extreme 
divergence ; both entering onto the stage of public life under 
similarly fortunate, happy and favorable auspices, if by dif- 
ferent avenues. Then what do we find during and after an 
active life? The blazings on the paths of both in life as 
diverse as are the solids and liquids, or as heaven and hell ! 
We find one brother always entertaining incomparable com- 
passion, if not tears, for the toiler, the downtrodden and the 
despised; ever freely yielding to all that which he only 
sought in lieu of baubling recompense and empty com- 
mendation, the unstudied gesture of honest admiration for 
duty bravely done; that natural mien from men of noble 
thoughts, whose bearing reflects frank esteem; that plainly 
reverential, open glance from noble eyes, those mirrors of 
the lofty soul, silently flashing, with lightning speed and 
certainty, purest sparks of praise, faith and hope for all 
things righteous, that insulate the soul against temptations 
of adversity's corrosion, while externally he carried the 
honored, if cruel, badge of war. We knew his heart was 
fired by a self -approving conscience, fed by purest patriotism 
and always tempered by noble and charitable resolve, al- 
though to the superficial he might have appeared as a con- 
queror of old, without grace or mercy, while on his famous 
"March to the Sea." Did fame, riches and power allure his 
modest ambition? No, for when the nomination for the 
Presidency of this glorious Republic was offered him, which 
by that party then, as it afterwards proved, was equivalent to 
an election, his reserved, retiring answer will ever remain 
vivid just so long as the stars and stripes float at the mast- 
head of State, which he was chiefly instrumental in saving, 
'*No, if you nominate me, I will not run; if you nominate 

59 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

and elect me, I will not serve." Hail to him who, having 
an uncoveted plethora of fame, knew its distinctive, but 
worthless, badge; knew, that a self -approving conscience 
outweighs all creation's pelf, and knew that to power but 
the coward's head will bow and the prevaricating poltroon 
pay his poisonous praise. And then when death was loving- 
ly and softly pressing his mortal clay, to gently ooze out his 
soul, to waft it on its wings to a better land, where all is 
truth and love, how many millions would have marched on 
every radii of his terrestrial home, to gently, lovingly, weep- 
ingly and reverentially close those eyes in death and filially 
kiss the lips, cold in clay, that during life such soothing, 
comforting, hopeful cheering, patriotic expressions helped 
to sound, of elevating encomium for the noble, brave and 
true in our direst, darkest hour of need, were it not that 
they were fearful lest they invade the sanctity of that home 
in such a trying hour ! Where assembled were those he 
loved as untiringly as he did his country, with that con- 
stancy and love, highest under heaven ! Those of his off- 
spring, mute with awe-stricken reverence in the sacred 
presence of death, tearfully awaiting to implant the last, 
the saddest, but the holiest kiss of love on those lips so pallid, 
but as guileless and as pure as the cherubic babe, charmed 
by nature's wondrous forms and colors, and with angelic 
mimicry joyously crowing in the neighboring couch! He 
whose memory will be revered and sacredly kept enrolled in 
the halo of his companions, the bright and noble patriots 
and martyrs of our country; revered as long as our moun- 
tain peaks, with coquettish fascination, secretly roll east- 
ward to steal the first greeting kiss from the morning sun! 
How describe or contrast the other ? Doubt not but we would 
do it were it not for the well-deserved reverence we bear 
for the memory of the departed, pure patriot, and will in 
our endeavor to forgive merely say these few words : That, 
while the one faithfully dedicated his life to the service of 
his country, and when it was in its saddest plight he was 
one of its most stalwart staffs, yet his magnific, unselfish 
devotion, personal sacrifice and starry patriotism are 
dwarfed into insignificance, in comparison with the enor- 
mity of the perfidy and crime of the other, who, being the 
principal factor in the cause that has sent, and is still send- 

60 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

ing, thousands down, down, down to vice, crime and sui- 
cide; and caused the lean legions, numbered by millions, to 
endure the keen pangs of hunger in a land of overproduc- 
tion, which legions, though they sincerely and rightfully 
mourned the patriot, will have righteous reason to rejoice 
when that dread spectre taps the bell and orders the other 
to pass in his checks and give a strict and full account of 
that Seyd divy. Those millions are ardently hoping for 
that day to fast approach, lest in their frenzy they might 
unwisely overstep the bounds of reason ; that day when only 
his name will remain that, when sounded within hearing dis- 
tance of the American ear, will be certain to arouse mingled 
feelings of due reverence for the one and cutting contumely 
for the other', just gratitude for the one and an apyrous 
hatred for the other, even at whose public picture the brain 
moves with an indescribable shudder, as the flesh instinctive- 
ly creeps at sight of a centipede or tarantula. Adding our 
wish with the others, and hailing with unbounded admira- 
tion the proverbial American magnanimity "that steps aside 
to let the reptile live," now we will leave this, to us, deplor- 
able dissertation and resume our proper subject. 

We find that in all the countries of the earth their finan- 
ciers have never agreed, even for one single day, on the 
proper ratio that one metal does, or should, bear to the 
other. And yet our money-mongers would have us follow 
such confused precedents, so as to keep their victims busily 
engaged in determining which of all those paralogizing pun- 
sters, or so-called great lights, should be the individual vic- 
timi's philosophic idol, while the usurers continued to rake in 
and swab up, by the aid of that caparisoned monster, interest, 
the nation's internal common property, or life-blood, the 
circulating medium, or garner the crop reaped from her 
sons' blood-seed, sown in the hope only of perpetuating her 
freedom, and mockingly styled interest on the public debt. 
They never make an attempt to tell us why it is that silver 
has declined in price or commercial value, or why it cannot 
be maintained at a ratio of sixteen to one with gold in the 
European markets, which is simply because the French Gov- 
ernment, as well as our own, have closed their mints to its 
coinage, thereby destroying the use for it, both continuous 
and absorbing, that, all of it coming into market hitherto 

6i 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

might be put to or availed of. Just something similar to as 
if the ladies of the Four Hundred of New York would decry 
the bustle you could not get sale for them, or possibly not 
a dollar for a shipload of them for that especial purpose, if 
you tried to peddle them up and down Fifth avenue for a 
week. 

The French ratio of fifteen and one-half to one, as to its 
legal tender debt-liquidating qualities, yet remains within 
the limits of French jurisdiction, but she no longer takes 
all the silver that may come into her markets and coin it, but 
if she did so all the silver in the world within an incredibly 
short time would be quoted at $1.30 per ounce, as it was 
at least quoted at for the last 4,000 years that we know of 
and read about, although some of such literature had to 
pass through its enemies' sieve. 

If France, or the United States, either, or both — say, both 
— should open their mints to the free coinage of silver and 
that France should retain her" ratio of fifteen and one-half 
to one, it should be our policy to have free coinage at six- 
teen to one; that is, if we deemed it wise to keep our gold 
from leaving the country, in order to allay the pretended 
fears of our anglomamacal sapaj,ous, but neither gold nor 
silver can leave the country, since both are apterous, apodal, 
astomus and acephalous, no matter how attrahent they may 
be to our foreign brother bankers, except that the balance 
of trade is against us, a condition for which we have no 
logical excuse, or that we export it to pay our previously 
contracted and flimsily and fleetingly excused debt. 

But why ask France to start free coinage of silver, and 
thus set a price for one of our staple productions, when 
France does not produce one-twentieth of the amount 
that we do (Mulhall's statistics, 1890), or why wait for 
or ask any other European nation, when we produce 
over six times more silver than all Europe combined? 
Or is it not most absurd to ask our financial enemy, 
England, whose principal existence is derived from in- 
terest, to assist us? What mockery and craven cow-, 
ardice, when we produce 245 times more silver than she 
does (Mulhall, 1890) ! Why not coin our silver for our 
own people? Gold is not at a premium, and we have 
all we want to pay our debts to our European credit- 

62 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

ors; debts that never had a right to exist, nor never 
would exist but for the ignorance or knavery, or both 
combined, of native-born, alien financial traitors. 

Let us briefly examine the figures that are accessible 
to every one, and should be familiar to every one. The 
United States Treasury reports give the exports and 
imports for the sixteen years ending 1891, which aver- 
age annually $744,000,000 of exports and about $639,- 
500,000 of imports, leaving about $105,000,000 per an- 
num in our favor; and for the forty-five years ending 
with 1893 an annual United States gold production of 
$43,000,000, or $1,890,000,000, or a total for all those 
years of $150,000,000 yearly, or since 1875 we had 
$2,400,000,000 gold rate alone to our credit, but, through 
the accursed bank or credit system, nearly all gone in 
only sixteen years to pay interest to foreigners and 
American aliens. Then what do we want gold for? 
Our people do not want it — old rags, dirty paper or old, 
worn-out shoes will do us, if it be a legal tender in the 
United States, not China. All we want any gold for is 
to pay for what was borrowed, through the traitorous- 
ly meddling interference of our own money fiends and 
their chief tutors, the English bankers, with our finan- 
cial legislation during our internal strife, when the public 
patriotic mind was engrossed by the one thought of the 
preservation of the Union. And now we say, repeal the 
funding act of 1870, and pay them their damnable gold 
and have done with them, once for all. 

Another of their preposterous bugaboo assertions, 
made in order to deter the people from ordering their 
mints thrown open to silver, so that their legal tender 
money shall be increased, so that their very life-blood 
may not be so unmercifully sapped by the interest-draw- 
ing fiends, is that, if we do, the world will dump their 
silver on our shores, so that all may have it for the carry- 
ing of it away. (I know some people that would like to 
have $1,000 of it stowed away in the leg of an old boot.) 

Well, this puts a new nose on the baby altogether. 
Now, heretofore we were not aware that the people of 
Europe in general were suffering from gout, contracted 
from sumptuous living or being overfed, or that they 

63 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

had any more of the burdens of nature's gifts than they 
could very well bear up under, or even that their abnor- 
mal increase of wealth in very recent years had unhinged 
their reason, which, if such an event has truly occurred, 
they might in their reckless, rollicking, raving capers 
fling their filthy silver on our synteretic shores, so it may 
be prudent and advisable to keep away from the coast, 
for a while at least, until the rumor is corroborated or 
dispelled. Where would it come from, or have the people 
paid so much attention to political economy as to have 
learned and arrived at the absolute truth that there is no 
value in money, but what is accredited to it, or centered 
in it by law, and therefore would be overjoyed at the 
opportunity to trade off their metallic evidences or tokens 
for anything of real value of any reasonable amount that 
they could use or utilize, for just what amounts to only the 
four-sevenths of all their metallic money, and only one- 
half of their full legal tender metallic money is silver. 
Of course, they would not miss that, as all Europe, with 
the exception of Russia, produced in 1890 less than the 
one-tenth part of that of the United States's production 
of gold; or about $3,000,000. Now, if they are in such a 
hurry to dump one-half of their legal tender on our shore, 
it is high time that we hasten to dump all of both our gold 
and silver into the deep, dark sea, so as to prevent them 
from afterwards desecrating our seacoast with our own 
principal relic of barbarism. 

Should they find out at some future day that they had 
some to spare, for outside the United States the twenty- 
four principal commercial countries of the world find 
themselves possessed of, after 6,000 years' gathering, the 
magnificent sum of $3 per capita, with a population of 
1,140,000,000. Approaching that day, the question may 
be in order. Could we absorb it? Yes! And if they all 
became confirmed greenbackers, we could absorb all the 
coin silver in the world into our circulating medium, our 
own included, which to-day would only amount to about 
$57 per capita at a ratio of fifteen and one-half to one; 
and not only that, but also all the coin gold of the whole 
world, which would only amount to about $50 per capita, 

64 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

our own included, and still have use and room for $ioo 
more of nickel, aluminum, gold or paper money. 

For, at the very lowest and most moderate estimate, 
our real property may be set down at $1,200 per capita, 
the circulating medium representing only the one-sixth 
of our real wealth. How much has the Netherlands or 
France got? And our actual or real annual total produc- 
tion amounts to over $520 per capita, which must be ex- 
changed by the aid of money or individual notes dozens 
of times over, and then you would have only the two- 
fifths in circulation of your per capita production. And 
now we ask the question, Is there a banker or money 
loaner who would hesitate to loan the assured two-fifths 
of a crop, when the farm and crop would be hypothe- 
cated, as well as the integrity and life of the owner? 

But you may ask what would we do with $200 per 
capita, and who would it benefit and who would it harm? 
We would simply apply it in the development of our 
illimitable resources ; the broad acre would become 
fenced ; the fallow acre fertilized ; the tramp given em- 
ployment; the farmer given an odd holiday, when now 
his brain is racked with that infernal mortgage inter- 
est; in a word, all legitimate enterprises would have a 
boom, with its naturally consequent stagnation in the 
speculation of watered stocks and bonds, and the grovel- 
ing interest gatherer would find his unnatural, dishonest, 
lucrative occupation or business on the wane, until that 
day, certain as death, arrives irrevocably placing him and 
his nefarious avocation among the archives of past his- 
tory. 

We are told that there would be a glut of money if 
such was the case; but who would be injured if we had 
$500 per capita? Surely, it would neither eat nor drink 
anything; it don't smoke; neither does it chew, and a 
good deal of it goes to church on Sunday, but sometimes 
seems to forget the poor invalid in the hovel. However, 
it would injure no one intentionally but the professional 
money loaner, whose leech-like, loafing operations would 
cease, and he would find himself forced to get down and 
rustle like unto all really honest people. But it would be 
impossible for any nation or government to impartially 

65 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

or without special privileges put more money in circula- 
tion than legitimate enterprise or business would demand 
or require. Supposing that every property owner or 
holder could obtain from government only one-sixth or 
one-tenth of the valuation of his property in the form of 
a loan at i or 2 per cent, per annum, the interest to be 
applied to the support of the general government, etc., 
the property to be appraised even on a European valu- 
ation basis? 

This method of finance would certainly hurt no one, 
with the exception of the money monger, until he would 
learn that he deserved no more special privileges than 
other common mortals; then it would cease to hurt him, 
and he could join in the general hallelujah arising from 
a people freed from the cankering curse of usury. 

We are told by otherwise sincere men that, a nation 
having more than its distributive share of the world's 
money, it would leave the country that had more than its 
share, or otherwise it would seek some other country. It 
is rather strange how otherwise intelligent men, who 
enter deeply into the ancient monetary system, full of 
hope that they can unravel its intricacies and set ail 
things right, so that we can pay a $1 debt with a dime, 
that on emerging from the meshes of low cunning and 
savage-divined theories, that they all, without exception, 
unmistakably betray forceful indications of tottering rea- 
son, brought about by the entangling, meaningless array 
of statistics flatly contradicting their theories and by the 
brain-whirling evidence of the diametrically opposite con- 
clusions that each unfortunate separately arrives at. 

As to the distributive share of money, passing around 
as though seeking the poor and needy, which would not 
be more wonderful nor the expression more ridiculous 
than the above assertion, which cannot be backed by 
the facts, well proved and known to exist; but possi- 
bly the gentlemen who last year made the assertion in 
the United States Senate honestly believed it at the time, 
or through the excitement of debate simply made a mis- 
take and meant the opposite. By looking at the August, 
1893, United States Mint report any fool can find that 
France, with one-thirtieth of the population of the 

66 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

twenty-five principal countries, has' but little less than the 
one-fourth of the gold and more than the one-sixth of» 
the silver of all the principal countries of the earth, with 
only a population of 39,000,000, while the other 1,170,- 
000,000 have the other three-fourths of the gold and five- • 
sixths or less of the silver. And Australia, with only 
4,000,000, or the one-three hundredth part of the popula- 
tion, has the one-thirty-fifth part of the gold of the 
world, and so on with other countries. Now, these coun- 
tries have eight times their distributive share of the 
world's money. Why don't it seek other climes and more 
genial spirits? Besides, France only some twenty years 
ago had to pay to Germany a sum amounting to over $25 
in gold per capita of her own population, and yet has 
$20.52 in gold per capita. The reason it don't is simply 
because the balance of trade is in their favor generally — 
or, in other words, they produce more than they consume, 
and the amount of foreign interest that they may be 
cursed with. Gold, or silver, or brass, or paper money 
cannot leave a country, except doled out by charity, if the 
nation is self-supporting and is not in debt to the follow- 
ers of Moses. 

And, again, no matter what volume or how much gold, 
silver or paper money, any or all supported by the law, 
that a nation may have or issue, it cannot depreciate 
within that country or jurisdiction when full tender, and 
had we the nine-tenths of all the world's gold, if we were 
self-supporting, it could not leave, except our anglo- 
maniacs cashed in their checks and hied themselves to 
Piccadilly or to Hades, and if the other tenth of the gold 
was recognized by the governments with which we dealt 
by the same ratio, then our gold with free coinage would 
have that universal bullion value, and in this connection 
what is true of gold is true of silver as well ; also it could 
be so arranged to have paper money recognized by an 
international exchange, but it is the finance of the United 
States alone that should concern us, and let us set about 
to establish a financial or monetary system of our own, 
independent of divine right, or class ideas, or the rag- 
picking Jews of Europe. 

We are told by men otherwise sincere that a govern- 

67 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

ment cannot make paper money as good as gold or silver 
money. If by that is meant that the government cannot 
by law create in paper such incombustible or indestructi- 
ble intrinsic attributes, properties or qualities, so that it 
would not burn, nor melt in liquids, then, and then only, 
we hold that they are right, for even if the government 
had asbestos woven or compressed into any textile fabric 
or paper-like sheets, and had thereon stamped the eco- 
nomic fiat of law, of course, it would withstand the fire 
and would not burn, but if society's mace was placed 
thereon with ink, the ink most likely, would vanish to 
spirit land, so we should be prepared, for those emergen- 
cies and run the pulp throug mold and thus either raise 
or sink on it the number and letters composing the money 
value. 

But we are not told why this is so that government 
cannot make paper as good as gold, simply because there 
is no conceivable reason why, for if we could not reason it 
out we would certainly hear all about it from monometal- 
lic standard advocates. And the very same people in the 
same breath tell us that it can be done, it has been done, 
and that it can be done again, as the Hon. H. M. Teller, 
United. States Senator from Colorado, for one stated in 
the Senate, October ii, 1893. 

Now, we believe that there is no man, in or out of the 
Senate, in the United States that has inquired further 
into ecumenic economy, or, rather, into the present credit, 
interest, tortuous, monetary system, that heirloom of 
savagery, or no man who appears more earnest in his 
convictions, on the surface at least, or constant in his 
endeavors to untangle or right a system that has brought 
ruin to nations, disgrace, poverty and premature death 
to countless millions of human beings, and madness to 
thousands of philanthropic, economic thinkers. But, 
Great Jupiter! To what can we ascribe this blazing in- 
consistency? Was it the lengthy journeyings among 
those chaotic labyrinths of conflicting theories, and the 
entangling, crooked, torose figures, with their ever-chang- 
ing significance, puzzling, harassing the brain until final- 
ly it has unhinged the reason. 

Let us hope not, and seek some other solution of the 

68 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

enigma. Let us ascribe it to the following fleeting sup- 
position. Being convinced that the financial policy of 
both old parties, which are identical, regarding the amount 
of money that should be in circulation, is wrong, and in- 
conceivably detrimental to the country, and that having 
grown old in affiliation with one of these parties, and be- 
lieving that nearly all available and good presidential tim- 
ber in that party has been chopped down, and if ever it 
hopes to succeed they must fish around for some plain, 
open, fearless and true American to carry their standard. 
Knowing all this, who knows but ambition throbs within, 
generated by the hope that his opposite but party con- 
temporaries are fast becoming convinced that the make- 
shift policy of a total inadequate metallic increase that 
he advocates is right, and that they, being known until 
now to be hostile to such a policy? Oh, how great are 
the possibilities ! And if nothing more than, oh, but just a 
few short weeks to fully realize and enjoy that esoteric hap- 
piness that springs from pursuit and hopeful expectancy 
to that supernatant individual smiled on by the god of 
chance, a dark horse ! How, then, could he fly in the 
face of fate and anger the gods by exposing and dwelling 
at length on the whole truth ? 

In looking over the record again we are further con- 
vinced that the foregoing conclusion is not or cannot be 
altogether groundless, and certainly do admire the highly 
excusable and eminently laudable ambition of the secret 
aspirant. But not so. The cunningly and craftily devised 
qualifications are as misleading and indefinite as any ad- 
vocate of the gold standard could possibly have left them in, 
which would go to show that he must have intended to 
give the banking element of the country to understand 
that his former truthful assertion was almost an irredeem- 
able mistake and wholly unintentional on his part. 

After- asserting that paper money could, had, and could 
again be made as good as gold, he hastens to say that 
it must be under certain conditions, and that the condi- 
tions must be all favorable ; also in something like gold 
standard jargon he talks about too much of it being in a 
country. So we are at full liberty to surmise what those 
conditions might be. Wonder if thev are such conditions 

69 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

as exist in France! Those might do, as that country is a 
Republic and is the most prosperous Httle nation in the 
world. But, then, we would like to disband that big army 
and increase her territory seventeen times over. 

Or such conditions as exist in Germany. If they are 
the conditions required in order to have absolute inter- 
changeable paper money — oh, no ! Then we do not want 
any; just give us iron or gold money, and please do not 
mention our name at all in connection with the sub- 
ject. Or such conditions as exist in Holland or Spain. 
What! A kingdom or a monarchy! Not much; we do 
not want any. Just demonetize everything and we will 
carry on all business with individual notes, as we carry on 
nearly everything individually. Or such conditions as 
exist in Italy or Greece? Oh, God forbid! Hold — that's 
enough ! Now, all these countries have full legal tender 
paper, interchangeable with gold or silver, and none of it, 
even at a discount, and only the four countries — Turkey, 
Egypt, Australia and China — that have no paper money, 
but all the rest in the world have, like ourselves, uncov- 
ered paper money. The England bank note is absolutely 
as irredeemable as the greenback of 1862, although it is 
exchangeable for gold at the bank, but that rests with 
the pleasure of the Bank of England. If they deem it 
wise not to exchange it, all that is required is to drag out 
that "letter of license" from the privy council and give 
it some fresh air, or proverbial London fog, when specie 
payment is suspended and paper is better than gold. But 
the people of England want no more gold than we do, 
except to settle their balances with foreigners, and there 
are $20 of paper circulation to one of gold. 

Perhaps the conditions indirectly referred to are those 
unfortunate circumstances that surrounded us in 1862. 
We will not endeavor to depict or enumerate them, but 
ask the shade of Lincoln, whither is that party drifting? 
To our feeble understanding it seems that we are sur- 
rounded by the most auspicious and propitious circum- 
stances and conditions of any people or country in the 
history of the globe for carrying out any gigantic innova- 
tion in any way calculated to alleviate or elevate the con- 
dition of mankind. A people surrounded with such a 

70 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

bounteous supply of nature's gifts, lacking only honor- 
able human duty, common justice; masters of more po- 
tential wealth and annual production than any other 
nation on the earth, in this or any other age, lacking only 
a sufficient, felicitous exchanging medium, it matters not 
what may be its material composition. But the issue of 
legal tender paper money would be no innovation, as 
every child out of swaddling clothes is aware of an issue 
that is practically in effect in almost every nation of the 
world. 

Bankers and fools but fear an overissue of legal tender 
or absolute money, whether paper or metallic. There 
never was, and doubtless never will be, an overissue of 
full tender money in any country in any age, and well you 
all know that no government can put in circulation more 
money than the legitimate demands of commerce require, 
and that no economic writer of note, unhampered or un- 
influenced by banking interests, ever plainly made such 
a statement, and any that ever did, their paralogizing can 
be refuted with childlike ease. The whole financial ques- 
tion is simply a contest for supremacy between the many 
and the few ; between reason and justice, and oppression 
and wrong. It may readily be resolved into the question, 
Will the credit system of to-day prevail and end in an ex- 
terminating social revolution, or will it be abolished and 
our present civilization proceed on progressive lines with- 
out future halt? 

A government, within its own jurisdiction, can make 
paper money just as good as gold, and even more desir- 
able, and it cannot make gold, or silver money, either, 
for any other nation, as the money of one country is but 
metallic bullion in any other country and has but a com- 
mercial value, which value arises relatively from the use 
given it by coinage as money, and by the legal price set 
on it by the law. 

If paper money alone, or in company with gold and 
silver, or all three, are clothed with full legal tender and 
similar powers, they must be as good as each other as 
long as that government exists. If the money is made 
from paper only, it gives that paper a tendency to be 
sought after by its own citizens more than the gold and 

71 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

silver of other nations would be by their citizens, because 
of the fact of the proportionate decrease of value in the 
gold or silver by the act of its demonetization by a great 
government in destroying the opportunity it once had 
for use as money in that country, just as silver fell in 
price on account of the destruction of its free coinage bene- 
fits or use. 

This paper money would not circulate as money in 
other countries, but would be exchangeable at a discount, 
the same as our gold coin is now, if the countries in 
which it was offered had commercial relations with the 
nation issuing it, or somewhat similar to that, as our ne- 
gotiable bonds have now an above par value to-day in 
foreign countries, while that bond is but paper and a debt, 
just like the Treasury note, but bearing interest, simply 
because those nations are possessed with a firm belief 
that this country would redeem their paper with the nec- 
essary grub, provided that they would only cook it them- 
selves. If all the nations agreed that an international 
congress would provide all countries to the pact with a 
per capita amount of international and interchangeable 
paper money, based on their wealth, population, area and 
resources of all kinds, then that paper money would be a 
better and more desirable international money than gold, 
which arrangement could be more easily arrived at than 
the adoption of the single gold standard and work less 
hardship on society in general. All indications bid fair 
for the adoption of such a paper money, at least by the 
first half of the next century. 

We sometimes hear that the time may come when we, 
or the world, will have a superabundance of money. Oh ! 
Please do tell us about when do you expect that time, 
gentlemen, so that we can trade ours off for ice, or crys- 
tallized, frozen realities. Now, will not the trader, in 
whose business and unearned profits you take such a deep 
interest, as against the honest due of the industrial com- 
munity — we mean the banker — not loan the one-third the 
amount of the valuation of a piece of property to the 
owner, when that propetry is hypothecated for the loan? 
Of course, no one should find fault with this deal, particu- 
larly as it is in the interests of, and sanctioned by, your 

72 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

clients, the bankers. Very well, then, on that very basis 
there can never be too much money in circulation while 
any property owner in the United States (we hope to be 
pardoned for taking more interest in the affairs of this 
country than in that of Turkey or the Kingdom of Basha- 
land) cannot readily, any and every day in the year, bor- 
row the one-third of the valuation of his property, at an 
expense to him, or interest to cover the cost of issuance, 
regulation and any ether clerical aid required, say, at the 
extraordinary expense of i or i^ per cent, per annum. 
How much would this amount to? About $400 per 
capita. But, as every one knows, if the banks owned 
all the money, and had the absolute control of the regu- 
lation of interest, they would issue that much, so that 
really it is not the amount in circulation that annoys 
them, but the ownership of it all and the full control of 
interest. We believe that such an amount would not be 
required and might be set down as. an overissue, but it could 
not injure anyone, commercially or physically, except the cost 
of its issuance — that is, if the people in common owned 
it, to whom it rightfully belongs, and had it stored away 
in general United States storehouses ; it would nor eat 
anything ; neither would it rust. 

But, suppose that the same 3,000 banking concerns 
were considered, by competent judges, to outweigh in 
importance, wealth and integrity the some 70,000,000 
of people of which that 3,000 was the waiting fraction, 
and that the 70,000,000 had decided to start a co-opera- 
tive bank of their own, and that, being told that they were 
not competent to safely judge of their own affairs, and 
that they must endeavor to be rigidly impartial in dealing 
with themselves and in order to loan themselves their 
common, civilizing agent, their common, public, national 
medium of exchange — money — they must put up six 
times the actual security of the amount of the nominal 
value that the individual may desire to borrow to culti- 
vate or develop his property or move his products from 
field to mart and that they heed the sound advice? How 
much would that leave issued ready for circulation, stort.1 
and locked away in their vaults, where it could not run 
riot in Europe, chasing the degenerate scions of feudal 

7Z 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

barons in their made career of tiger-tail pulling and bac- 
chanalian orgies, to be loaned on good and sufficient secur- 
ity at I per cent, per annum? Would it not leave over 
$200 per capita, estimating our wealth from an envious, 
European standpoint, and nobody discommoded but those 
who tried to turn the Ternple into a gambling den. 

If paper and either metal, or both, were the full legal 
tender money of the country on equal terms by law, the 
metallic money could not decrease by leaving the coun- 
try, except that we purchased more abroad than we sold 
abroad, and then the metal money would only exchange 
at the ratio adopted by the countries with which we dealt 
as bullion, no matter what amount we put in the token 
pieces or what names we gave them at baptism. And 
the more we increased our absolute national tender paper, 
the more we decreased the purchasing power of our 
metallic money or increased the price of all commodities, 
nominally measured by money, as the price or purchasing 
power of all money is measured by its volume. Here 
we have another evidence of the operations of the law, 
as regards money in kind, arising from that part of the 
law which regulates its volume ; the law that at first cre- 
ated value and in the gold regulated its vacillant measure 
of commodities, without any further expressed' law re- 
garding it, by increasing the volume of its competing 
money, no matter what the material it may be composed 
of, it decreases the purchasing power of gold, although 
the composition may be paper, turquoise stones or toad- 
stools. 

The mention of the above materials reminds us of what a 
gentleman friend of ours related to us as having occurred 
to him, or, rather, that he experienced while visiting in 
Washington and listening to a speech delivered in the 
Senate, October 23, 1893, on the financial question. He 
said that he felt one of the most peculiar and unaccount- 
able sensations of his life, produced, he believed, from 
the strangely enervating and escharotic intonation of an 
interruption by some one, which seemed to him to come 
from a voice of ages past, or from out a tired-waiting 
grave, the words being lost to him, but the last few 
of which were: "A certain kind of Russia iron." Becom- 

74 



PLAIN ECONOMIC. FACTS 

ing strangely interested, we hunted up the record and 
found the words alluded to. Being so deeply impressed 
with the easy philosophy and moving conclusions by the 
deliverer of those words, as is plainly shown in the full 
interruption, we would consider ourselves extremely cul- 
pable and derelict of our plain duty and totally incapable 
of appreciating in the slightest degree the profound reason- 
ing and happily devised avenue presented for the relief 
of a nation in distress contained in that interruption if 
we should fail to embrace the opportunity, whenever it 
presented itself, of congratulating the people of that State 
on their extremely happy and fortunate selection in 
choosing such a one that the interposing Oracle had 
hailed from. Proud not alone of that probationary, saint- 
ly Oracle may they feel! 

But how can common mortals rest without attempting 
to pay a passing tribute of reverence to that State for 
preternatural phases in its past history that human beings 
ne'er proposed. Indeed, well may that State consider 
itself suppletively elevated and feel proud, not of having 
a fertile, stony soil, but that Rock, within her imaginary 
sacred limits, on which them living Martyrs to that free- 
dom of thought they would only deny to others made their 
accidental landing while seasick, falling, to thank their 
God, prostrate on the ground, face upwards, in unison 
with their now, at last, realized, past hopes; that they 
found a land inhabited by a barbarous, but more noble 
minded race of savages than they, wherein they now 
could rear temples to the glory of Him who had deliv- 
ered them and by a tempest cast them on the Rock and 
then build themselves a home. Ah! what a bountiful, 
peaceful, sublime, loving home ! But how utterly incom- 
parable and insignificantly dwarfish to that studiously 
eclectic and long and sesthetically devised home con- 
structed by their illustrious and noble progeny for their 
journeying brethren in Christ ! 

That home, whose gigantic walls defy admensuration, 
the very crystalline purity and beauty of which, by the 
desecrating hand of man, if possible, is rendered more 
inspiring. And that roof! A glance at it shocks and 
staggers the conceited mind that glitters with the polish 

75 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

of fine sense, yet lacking sensibility. And those lights in 
that home! Though man sees them and, beholding, 
enjoys their light, yet their cause and composition passes 
the power of the mind to conceive. Oh ! that we could 
but do justice in describing the heavenly divined propor- 
tions and beauties of this home, whose selection and 
erection was prompted by that ever-hopeful passage, 
"Blessed are the poor, for their lodging shall be heaven- 
ly." Yes, that home ! And their wandering brethren in 
Christ! The welkin-covered, starlit stone quarry! And 
the tramp! For a pillow with an old shoe, lodge! 

Being so overcome with admiration and amazement at 
the splendor of the little bit of oratory and the illimit- 
able measures of philosophy it contained, that from be- 
fore our mind the magnitude or sublimity of its aptness 
it would not down, but fitfully aroused the brain, while 
the balance of the body laid yet dormant. Yes, it haunt- 
ed us in our sleep so that we dreamt that in a city we 
saw an aged human form, which at first we mistook for 
Father Time himself; he was standing visibly astonished 
and intently scanning, with unconcealed surprise, at 
something that none in the crowd could divine, but a 
newsboy who was endeavoring to forcingly coax the ap- 
parently bewildered, old gentleman out of harm's way, 
who was racking his brain trying to discover what virtue 
or secret could be in that piece of iron. As it happened 
to be a piece of railroad track, on which the electric print- 
ing press and train passed over as it made its hourly 
rounds of the globe, soon being due on its horal mid- 
night round, hence the anxiety of the boy, to whose aid 
we now came, and in conversation with the old gentleman 
soon learned : 

That in youth he had stuffed the mind with traditional 
husks and legendary chafi', because, being inordinately 
ambitious, he thought that he had too many competitors 
at that stage of life who sought actual truths and whole- 
some judgment, based on common justice, to guide their 
thoughts in after life, therefore thought, with others in 
his class, that there was a surer opening on the side 
of jugglery and chicanery, and that now the sterile brain 
had become so ossified, stereotyped and 8:rooved similar- 

76 ' 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

ly with fuscus-colored metal that iron was always held 
before the brain as in a mirror, and that all progressive 
inventions and ideas innovated since the iron age were 
mysteries to him. We were moved to pity for the nice- 
looking clean, old man. Suddenly remembering that once 
or twice we saw him casually chat a moment with Gar- 
rison, Phillips, Sumner and others, we recognized him, 
and through reverence for the memor}^ of those that are 
gone we placed him in charge of the conductor of the 
moving sidewalk, and told the latter where to set him 
off. He proved to be no other than that imposing volume 
of reek, the eminent, hoary-haired Hoar from Mass. 

The delusion was so real-like that our singular dream 
haunts us still. On awakening and feeling so tired from 
the night's journey, we tried to compose our thoughts for 
the day's task, but naturally they reverted north, to 
the scene of our late ethereal (or disordered stomach) 
experience. And across the mind flashed the resurrection 
of our first impressions of Boston. Alas ! How fallible 
and vacillant is man! Oh, then, for that flashing instant, 
how keenly we remembered our first glorious, soul-melt- 
ing tears of joy that rolled down our cheeks when first 
reading the history of that Boston Tea Party, the out- 
come of an opposition to the imposition of a tax that 
could not hold a candle to that now exacted by a horde of 
coxcombical, dudish parrots of our own creation, who but 
love and live to rob and mock us. These tears were 
now changed to that of cold and bitter sorrow at the 
thought of the incongruity of our precepts and practices, 
and we could not refrain from exclaiming, Old, obsolete, 
lethargic Boston ! How appropriately would thy pet 
name suit thee — "Hub of the Universe" — if our wheels of 
locomotion were now, as then, the wheels of the Red 
River Cart, into whose composition no true American 
mettle (metal) enters, nor Russia iron, either; whose 
shrewish screak may be heard where it can't be seen ; that 
annoying nuisance of irregular, disagreeable and screech- 
ing sound that receives far more invective than the worn- 
out, primitive contrivance that produced it does obtain 
attention! With what seeming fitness these pilgrims, 
seeking a special God and a common Mammon, named 

77 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

some of your towns when, for instance, they called one 
the river of the Fallen, where the spindle and the loom, 
through the speculators in human attributes, should hud- 
dle humanity together in order to become versed in mys- 
teries of vice and baffling crime ; where the modern Mark 
Antony may be found popping beans and grinding poodle 
sausage. 

In this connection we believe kind "Providence" has re- 
minded us of that little clam farm, Rhode Island, from 
which some officious individual succeeded in advertising 
himself by saying that, "The price of commodities in 
one nation practically fixes the price in all nations, and 
that you cannot maintain high prices in this country, ex- 
cept you have depreciated money (just the very thing the 
people want), and disjoint our money from the money of 
the world" (as though it was not now disjointed). Great 
Scott! Such incoherent babble, coming from a land 
where the wives of the henpecked husbands utilize their 
pet baby cats to set on eggs and hatch out chickens to 
save the fruitful evipositing time of the mother "cluck"! 
Is not such silly, senile, economic expressions, made in 
the Senate of a great nation, a very sad illustration of 
the degeneration of the human mind when surrounded 
by the insanity-inciting pomp of polished robbery, and 
when also foully fooled by the flattery of crafty, flatulent 
knaves? Attach Rhode Island to Delaware and then 
add two new counties to Nevada! 

We asked our friend what his impressions were of the 
one who conducted the bulldozing side of that Repeal 
Act — that was, Dannie Satyr, that bifacial, old, shrew- 
ish washwomen of the Wabash, who took care of the 
dirty linen of His Eminent, ponderous, obstetric Obesity, 
who, some say, is a constant sufferer from a strange com- 
plication of diseases, known only to the erudite and cul- 
tured as cerebric dipsomania, political tenesmus and 
social micturiation, or, as they cite in proof thereof, he 
would never indulge the noxious assuetude of causing to 
circulate such iliac, aerated or gaseous farmer-puzzles as 
innocuous desuetude. While hoping for his speedy recov- 
ery, we will give the answer of our friend. He replied : 

"Oh, yes ; before I was rightlv seated in the public gal- 

78 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

lery of the chamber he was pointed out to me, with the 
following remarks: *Do you see that skyscraping indi- 
vidual?' 'Yes.' 'Well, his legs place the brain so far 
from the earth's surface that it reaches the centrifugal 
current of our atmosphere, which moves so fast that the 
arising aerified gases do not get time to blend or unite 
in that proper proportion that we find to be the relative 
constituent elements of our normal atmosphere, and those 
rapid-changing, inhaled gases have each such a differ- 
ent influence and cause such sudden and diverse effer- 
vescences of the brain that the blamelessly possessing 
individual, nor no one else of sound mind, wants to be, 
nor should be, held accountable or responsible for what 
is done or said by the lank individual, unfortunately con- 
demned to carry such brains under such tall, volatile, 
whirling conditions. For it may be seen that the fast, 
evanescent thoughts of the brain, and by it forced to ex- 
pression like unto any of those that has been taken 
note of, that they belong to the realms of cosmic dust, that 
stray, undetermined element without a mother or any 
other claimant, and also belong to the fair-looking but 
cold and frozen elements of that upper current which, 
when cast to the earth, falls so gently and at first appears 
so bright and clear, but which never can stand, and of 
such apparent purity, yet cannot bear that searching, 
scrutinizing light of, but vanishes at the first ray of, a 
straightforward, impartial, honest, genial sunbeam. Well, 
the impression he left on me was simply this — that not 
only did he represent the very small half of injiannie, but, 
aside from his whipper-incomportment, that megrim- 
yielding, strummingly-stultifying air, with which he sat, 
or, rather, flopped, into his chair impressed me as though 
he must have had a proxy either from Jesus of Nazareth 
or else from that many-headed dog-devil Cerberus in his 
tail pocket to use in case one of the time-serving disciples 
were missing.' " It may be laid down as an axiom of 
political economy that the law, whether national or inter- 
national, creates all value, which value is extrinsic, in all 
money, no matter what the material from which it is 
struck, or of which it is composed, may be or is classed, as 
of any important or intrinsic worth or value; that the 

79 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

law, which demands its part use as money, thereby 
enhances the price of that material in the proportion 
that the required volume to be used as money bears to its 
volume extant or reasonably known to exist in nature. 
Since the newly and past constant, legally created use 
provided for that material absolutely withdraws it from 
those other uses to which it can be applied to that amount 
required as money, by bringing in a new competitor to 
the field of application and purchase. While the mate- 
rial is used as money, mankind is prohibited from enjoy- 
ing any of the utilitarian benefits claimed for it of intrin- 
sic properties; consequently the art, etc., intrinsic quali- 
ties of money are lost to man forever while used as 
money, and that part of the metal not in use has propor- 
tionately increased duties to perform, which tends to in- 
crease the price, and its legal and enhanced price may 
deter people from enjoying the benefits to be derived 
from its intrinsic qualities, which otherwise they might 
avail themselves of. If by coinage of gold as money soci- 
ety is robbed of the inestimable benefits of its intrinsic 
qualities, then, for God's sake, stop the crime and substi- 
tute it by aluminum, copper or nickel, if not "Russia 
iron!" . 



80 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 



PART 11. 

HONEST MONEY GRESHAM LAW. 

Gresham law. — Davy Jones. — International paper money. — Hoard- 
ing gold. — Tommy Gresham. — European governments virtually say. — 
Postscript. — Quelque Monsieur ait voulut. — Inquire in Europe. — A 
fair proposition. — Prof, Soetbeer's statistics and U. S. statistics or 
mint reports. — Europe's gold, silver and paper money, and per cap. — 
The fi,gure of our foreign trade. — Honest money. — How dishonest. — 
New financial system. 

We often hear people expose their ignorance of the 
subject of finance by quoting for those who have never 
paid any attention to the subject some highly entertain- 
ing and enlightening catch-phrases for the benefit of the 
latter, who, it appears, have infinitely more reasonable 
judgment than the former in matters of the kind, and 
which phrases the former assert are extracts from the 
"Gresham law," the same as if it had been an all-impor- 
tant law of finance, respected and adopted by all writers 
and financiers ; but there is no such thing as "Gresham 
law\" Long ago there lived in England a man of the 
name of Tommy Gresham, and he wrote a book on 
finance, and he did the best he could — that is, for his light 
and the light of his day, which was a tallow candle — and 
in his book he quoted from others, or else he plagiarized, 
and that is all there is to it, something like what is briefly 
explained in paragraphs 95 and 96. But they quote him 
as saying that cheap money will drive out dear money, 
but quote it thus only when they wish to leave the im- 
pression that it is for this reason they fear that paper and 
silver money will drive out gold. What a bowdy-man 
they raised to scare the child ! But in their great rush 
for some excuse they overlooked real cheap money, so 
great was their hurry, and they forgot all about nickel 
and copper. 

If no other country but this had gold and silver, or 
double standard free coinage, whatever we purchased of 

81 



PLAIN ECONOMIC. FACTS 

them or sold to them, then all such transactions would 
be computed in gold. If there was a balance in our favor, 
they paid us in gold or goods, and if there was a balance 
in their favor, we paid them in gold or goods like^vise, 
so gold could not leave the country, except that we pur- 
chased more than we sold. Whenever we buy from for- 
eigners what we can produce, or for whatever luxuries we 
purchase from them, it is a pity they cannot charge us 
ten times more than they do to their other alienees, for they 
never buy from us but what they cannot exist without, 
or else they must fast and pray 365 days a year. 

If any country with which we dealt had free coinage 
of silver, say, at a similar ratio to ours, then our silver 
bullion would be worth as much at that ratio as gold 
bullion in their country; but if ours was sixteen and 
theirs fifteen and one-half to one, then their silver, weight 
for weight, being only so reckoned between nations, 
would be dearer than ours, for one ounce of gold, or, say, 
$20, could only buy fifteen and one-half ounces of silver 
in their country, but it would buy sixteen ounces in this 
country, so our importing merchants or establishments of 
exchange would ship our silver over there when com- 
pelled to pay a balance in their accounts. For instance, 
by buying here the worth of thirty-one ounces gold of 
our silver, which would be 496 ounces, which in a country 
with fifteen and one-half to one would be worth thirty- 
two ounces of gold, so our merchant would make one 
ounce gold, or $20, profit by the transaction ; this is why 
that under such conditions silver would leave the coun- 
try. 

If we have a ratio of fifteen to one, and the people we 
dealt with had fifteen and one-half to one, then our gold 
would be sent instead of silver, because $20 in gold would 
buy fifteen and one-half ounces silver in their country, 
while it would only buy fifteen ounces in ours, so, by tak- 
ing gold there and buying silver with it and the one-half 
ounce profit in fifteen, this time one ounce in thirty would 
be made. Simply that money is sent out of a country 
that is most appreciated by law or dearest in that coun- 
try to which it is sent. Again, let us reverse' it. If we 
had sixteen to one, and they had fifteen and one-half to 

82 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

one, then they would ship their gold here to settle their 
balances; or if they wanted to buy silver, or if a broker 
in bullion had an opening for a large amount over there, 
he could make about sixty-five cents per pound gross at 
that ratio difference by shipping the gold over here, pur- 
chasing and shipping the silver back to the country with 
fifteen and one-half to one. 

If we had an arrangement arrived at by a republican 
conference, consisting of the republics of the world, 
which conference would have some sense and 'consist- 
ency about it, for an international paper money, with 
the name and amount printed on each piece or note or 
bill in the language of all the republics to the pact, then 
that paper money would be as good as gold in each of the 
countries, and would save the more expensive shipment 
of any bullion or its loss by sinking, as the records of the 
numbers and series of the notes could be kept, and if 
lost their substitutes could be reissued at little cost. 

One or more of the articles of agreement should stipu- 
late or provide that in no case should any corporation 
or individual be allowed to charge any interest or incre- 
ment, or increase or stoppage, by any method whatever, 
to any government, corporation or individual for a loan 
of such money of any amount. But the government to 
whom it was issued for distribution, by loan on good se- 
curity, to its own citizens or otherwise, might charge i or 
2 per cent, per annum to defray the expense of emis- 
sion, records, etc. ; any other but that government loaning 
it to forfeit right of collection, with penalty, etc.; such 
money to be full legal tender in any, either or all coun- 
tries for any or all debts, dues and demands, etc., etc. 

Again, it is asserted that gold will be hoarded if we 
have free coinage of silver. Yes ; but it is the bankers 
who hoard it, and all other kinds at times, for the pur- 
poses of speculation. But if all other people would hoard 
it it could not well be wondered at, for, since we are only 
too well aware that people have always hoarded gold (so 
it is said, at least, but in China they hoard silver), and 
particularly in this country since the war, for they wished 
to be prepared for the regular panic and knew not what 

83 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

day it might be here — which bank panics are the natural 
sequence of the decrease of the circulating medium, 
whether legal or by law, or artificial by speculation, by 
the banks contracting or otherwise, or the increase of 
population or business, without relative increase of 
money — but they were certain such days would come 
from what they have experienced by the almost daily 
tinkering with our financial laws for the past thirty years 
or more. 

They also knew that England has only a gold (and 
paper) standard since 1816, and other countries now for 
the past twenty years or more, and they knew not with 
any certainty what or who to believe, since they became 
aware that in our very midst, and even in the Congress 
of the nation, such traitors could be found as to demone- 
tize some $600,000,000 of full legal tender silver, without 
deigning to acquaint the owners, the people, of the fact, 
and do it, like a thief or burglar, in the night. They 
want to be prepared lest the same traitors — some of 
whom have the supreme gall not only to venture out 
from some secret penitential crypt, but are still active 
in public life. All hail the great American people, who 
practically illustrate such sublime philosophy and char- 
ity by stepping aside in order to "let the reptiles live !" 

Yes, the same may demonetize g-old as well, in order to, 
or in the hope of, precipitating the country into some 
calamitous turmoil in order for them to accomplish some 
other of their fiendish designs ; so they hoard their gold 
in the hope of some other nation recognizing its mone- 
tary bullion value at that nation's ratio. They hoard it 
also because the price of a given bulk of gold represents 
some twenty-eight times the same bulk or volume as that 
of silver, thus rendering its cache less conspicuous than 
the silver one could be, as also less risk incurred through 
danger of dstruction than that to which paper money is 
liable. 

If the}^ would hoard money more than they do and 
trust banks or corporations less, they would be better off 
than they are to-day, and we would have more money in 
circulation than we have now and far less stagnation in all 

84 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

industry. They hoard it also because they hear nothing but 
gold, gold, gold, through the daily advertising, blanket-sheets, 
and if by chance they have read to them a purchased 
editorial — ahem ! — in a dodger of the both subsidized and 
monopolized press, whose every column is reeking with 
the glowing and laudatory accounts of the three principal 
agents of Satan — murder, scandal and gold — so gold is 
dinned into their very existence, for the vociferous agi- 
tation of its name is supernally vibrating the very atmos- 
phere they breathe. 

So is it any wonder that gold disappears, or has dis- 
appeared, during recent years, or is supposed to leave 
the country? If the cheaper silver would drive the gold 
out of the country, why did it not drive it out since 
1873, for every European country since demands gold 
from us in payment for anything and everything that we 
either buy or owe them, but, instead of driving out gold, 
we have more gold now (1894) than we had in 1873, 
having now $604,000,000, or more than any European 
nation except France. And whether we have free coin- 
age of silver or not, we have to pay them in gold either 
way for anything we chance to owe them. So, as to our 
silver legal tender driving out their bullion legal tender, 
gold, when it may have to go, whether silver or no, the 
gauzybosh of the so-called Gresham law is so evident 
that the phrase, cheap and dear money, in that connec- 
tion, should give way on the stage for something fresh, 
if it was nothing more than the "pas de ventre." So 
about all there is in the titular Gresham law may be 
summed up in about this way : That a sane man with an 
eye to business would sell his pork in France if he could 
get there one-half cent per pound more than he could get 
in Amsterdam, Rotterdam or Hellgate. 

Oh, beg pardon! By the way, I never hear this sup- 
posed Gresham law quoted but it reminds me of a man 
of the name of Tommy Gresham, English by birth, with 
curly, red hair a foot long, who always kept a good-sized 
chamber in his attic vacant, but intended for the occupa- 
tion of that amaranthine alkahest, of the cringing cuUion, 
known as polished politeness and eclectic etiquette, and 

85 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

brings vividly to my mind, as he related to me, long ago, 
his thrilling experiences, away back in the early fifties, 
when he first, in company with others, explored Califor- 
nia Gulch. The one that interested me most was that, 
when he was compelled to pay $1.25 per pound for his 
flour — the legal tender being gold dust and nuggets, as 
yet unstamped, but to which the mints were open and 
the general price pronounced by law — and as he naively 
remarked that the flour he was buying then, in the nine- 
ties, at 1%. cents per pound, had just as much intrinsic 
properties or value as the flour he paid one hundred 
times more for, or $1.25 per pound, I always thought that 
here was a good opportunity for the untutored savage to 
feel intrinsic value and to apply some of the financial 
theories of the world's bullion, cheap and dear m.oney, 
and very high priced flour of unchanging intrinsic value. 
But we may praise the Lord for being saved from ever 
again hearing such fabulous facts from Tommy Gresh- 
am's law, for we believe he long since turned up his toes. 

We sometimes hear the scintillating savants of social 
science give, as smickering as sombrous, a solution of 
their significantly, shuflling explication in regard to what 
constitutes an honest dollar, from which their surround- 
ings and circumstances may as clearly be divined as 
their definition is opaque ; for instance, there is one Davy 
Jones down in Alabamy that occasionally the indigenous 
swamp residents, with sportive familiarity, hail as guv'na, 
whose explanation by proxy is somewhat as follows : 
"Coined metal which contains sufficient valuable bullion 
to assert itself in the markets of the morld at the face 
value stamped upon it by government, without regard to 
any further act of that government, or whether it be 
solvent or insolvent or afterwards ceases to .exist." (The 
italics ai-e ours.) 

Then, why coin it all? Avoid that expense by having the 
refiner run it into circular tablets or pellets of different 
weights, by which it is determined in the markets of the 
world, if they are to be preferred to the markets or the 
people of the United States? He leaves others to deter- 
mine or speculate as to what kind of value he requires in 

86 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

the bullion; if intrinsic, and we wanted to buy fifty 
pounds of iron in England, then our honest dollar would 
have to weigh fifty pounds in gold, which would only 
yield more ocean freight traffic. If legal money, vision- 
ary or verbal face value, stamped by nearly all govern- 
ments on it, which is the only value in it, and which is 
supposed to enable it to assert itself, which action by 
European governments in effect or virtually says : 

Dear Sir — Your honest dollar money is not our honest 
thaler, franc, florin, or rouble money,* but if you have 
any gold bullion, which at present wf are allowed to 
coin into pieces of given weight and fineness, according 
to established custom, and therefore we will take it and 
coin it, at that ratio, from and for our citizens only who 
have traded you for it merchantable commodities at cur- 
rent market rates, fixed by the different material-moneys 
— gold, silver and paper — that we are permitted to keep 
for the benefit of our own people, so as to keep up the 
price of their productions to that, or above, if possible, 
the world's current market price. 

We know that there is not gold enough in the world 
to carry on its business or commerce with, and to main- 
tain the price of labor and commodities that our people 
are accustomed to, and which estimates or valuations 
are so firmly established in their minds, that it would 
be dangerous for us to attempt the experiment of trying 
to disabuse their minds of such, except by gradual stages. 
As you are well aware, that if there was gold enough in 
the world to carry on its trade, why, we would demone- 
tize it or close our mints to its further coinage. We need 
not say any more on that score. 

We said that we were permitted to accept and coin 
gold, but for that miserable privilege we are strictly 
bound for to exact gold from foreigners, even our best 
allies; but for this interdicting order we would gladly 
take your honest paper or silver dollar. You ask why, 
being under pecuniary obligations, or in debt to, and 

*The Czar of Russia, by ukase, changed the legal value of the 
rouble February 6, 1897. 

87 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

ever standing in constant dread of foreclosure and its 
inevitable bankruptcy by usurers, we simply have to bow 
the head or bend the knee at their every command ; they 
are well aware of the limited volume of gold in nature, 
and that it would require over twenty times its known 
volume to supply sufficient currenc)^ to carry on the busi- 
ness of the world at the present current market rates in 
their present relation to the established purchasing, meas- 
uring or exchanging powers of the legal fiat, inscribed or 
stamped on regulated weights or stipulated pieces of gold. 
Therefore, they allow us to coin it for use by our people 
with the. other money, but with the exaction that it be 
recognized only as international bullion to outsiders. 

This exacting condition is placed upon us by the usur- 
ers, who hope thereby to deter all governments from in- 
creasing their silver and paper full legal tender circula- 
tion to a much greater proportion than the total volume 
of their gold amounts to ; they hope, by keeping this 
buccinal bubble of cheap-dear-honest-international-intrin- 
sic-world-market value before the people, and loudly 
sounding in the ears of those that they have played, are 
now, and will play, for suckers, and by purchasing rene- 
gade, rantering politicians that they can keep up such a 
dinning and damnific racket that the voice of honesty and 
reason will be drowned for generations to come, but 
sometimes the moth comes too near the candle and him 
and his generation end. 

Thus, by keeping down or decreasing the volume of 
money, they know that it increases the purchasing power 
of their principal, gold, and enables them to regulate and 
demand from the industrious producer, that knows not 
how to take things easy, whatever per cent, of his pro- 
duction or interest that they deem wise, which is generally 
only enough allowed to be retained by him to maintain 
the muscular or physical powers of the body and the 
brain, in an active animal condition, so that he may con- 
tinue to keep them reveling in luxury and immoral pleas- 
ures. This is mostly why we cannot now take your honest 
dollars of paper or silver at present. 

But our ardent hopes ever keep us watching westward 

88 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

to that great and glorious Republic of the United States, 
so fortunately situated, and possessing more potential wealth 
and producer of more monetary-token-metals than any other 
nation of the earth ; and we fervently hope that, through 
the wisdom and patriotism of your statesmen, some other 
monetar}^ system will be devised and perfected other than 
that credit-interest system, which is the curse of all soci- 
ety and the cause of all our strife and woes; which has 
caused our children to exile themselves from the Father- 
land of their native home, and to seek in your loving 
country that comfortable existence that by the usurers 
was denied them in the land of their birth ; and, indeed, 
we have keenly and sensibly felt the generous justness of 
the practice and teachings of your institutions, which 
made it possible for those exiled sons of ours to, in a 
great measure, support their aged parents here, worn out 
from performing that inexorable task of maintaining 
usurers, rendering those past laborers pensioners, as it 
were, on the generosity and equal chance of Republican 
institutions ; and may that new system be our salva- 
tion by delivering us from that thralldom, which prac- 
tically renders us serfs to the avaricious, unconscionable, 
debasing and degenerating will of the money-loaning 
monster, and end in our adopting a separate or universal 
republic, and for the perpetuation of such heavenly hu- 
mane institutions we shall ever pray. 

Yours fraternally, but in secret, 
Secretary Typical European Government. 

P. S. — A rumor published in our daily monopolistic 
press having come to our notice — but which, really, we 
do not believe — asserts that there are some misguided 
and traitorous individuals to be found in the United 
States who would feign foist upon you, and, if possible, 
eternally rivet upon you, that demoniacal monetary sys- 
tem from which we are now suffering the tortures of the 
damned. Lest there should be a shade of truth in the 
rumor, we take this opportunity to imploringly beg of our 
exiled children to never disgrace those they left behind, 
enduring the teeming hardships, flowing from such a 

89 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

social blight on progress, universal liberty, truth, knowl- 
edge and benevolence, by ever assisting by thought, word 
or action such traitorous fiends as thus might ever en- 
deavor to destroy those institutions, the universal benevo- 
lence of which we have felt and even tasted through you, our 
exiled wanderers, still loved, and not forgotten. 

Yours, etc., Sec. 

Now w^e wish to say to all the Joneses that, having 
eaten so much fog in our young days, that, by aeromancy 
we know that Davy owns twenty transatlantic steam- 
ships, busily engaged in carrying on his vast commerce 
with European countries, and therefore highly qualified 
to define an honest European dollar. Ten of his ships 
are explosive oil tank steamers, which, if the intrinsic 
racket worked properly, might be remodeled into a safer 
carrying commodity, gold freight; the other ten are sundry 
freight and passenger. Now, what makes him hot is, on one 
of his recent trips he had a silver dollar with him, in which 
a hole was punched, a string passed through and tied, 
and then hung around his neck; while he rarely saw one, 
he loved the color. Becoming short of cart wheels and 
remembering the hoodoo charm, he tried to have it 
cashed, when, lo! he found that all the European mints 
were closed to silver and he would either have to carry 
it back or take its commodity price for it, about fifty 
cents, or two and one-half francs. He chewed the air a 
little, but the polite Frenchman told him, as an assuaging 
snowball to the rage, that if by the law of chance that 
piece of silver happened to be in France before she closed 
the mints it would have been coined into a five-franc 
piece, and that then it would be legal tender for $i worth 
of peas or champagne quelque Monsieur ait voulut. 

Strange, was it not, that his piece of silver, which was 
heaviest, was not legal tender; it was round, milled on 
the edge, had a device or motto, and a nice picture on it, 
just like the other, only the other was legal tender, so 
now, if he could induce the Frenchman to swap pieces 
with him, he would be two and one-half francs ahead; 
he tried, but failed, and was told that he must not forget 

90 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

that Americans were not making financial laws to gov- 
ern any European country, and that out of the fourteen 
European countries that ten of them had full legal tender 
silver money for their own special use and benefit, but 
not for his, as he was a supposed American, and that 
country had closed its mints to the free coinage of silver 
or else they would have honored his coin at almost its 
face value. 

On making a little inquiry over there, he might have 
learned the astounding facts that out of the fourteen 
countries thirteen had full legal tender paper money, but 
not for his benefit, and the one that did not have it is 
the most benighted and the most impoverished of them 
all, that is Turkey; that, after centuries of the collection 
of gold, we find that they have the crocodile inspiring 
sum of $1.52 per capita, which is only legal tender, and 
$1.32 limited tender silver, or slave-pauper money. 
Strange, isn't it? 

While the only country we find having the single silver 
standard, N. B., has eleven times more gold than legal 
tender silver, and nearly twenty-three times as much 
legal tender paper as legal tender silver, that is Russia, 
who made platinum legal tender at one time; and most 
peculiar, isn't it? 

Another important country, whose progressiveness we 
should emulate, that has no silver standard and that cen- 
turies ago was king of the financial world, but who has 
only saved $8 per capita from the wreck, with more un- 
covered paper than gold to help her to keep up her na- 
tional stock of legal tender up to $17 per capita, that is 
Portugal, would have us recede like her. Another coun- 
try that would, no doubt, in your opinion be a good cri- 
terion to be guided by, that has %Z-7^ P^^ capita gold, $3.14 
uncovered paper and no legal tender silver, is the Scandi- 
navian Union, about to dissolve. 

The fourth and last European (counted so) country 
•without legal tender silver is England, which, after all 
the blockade running, privateering, buying through her 
emissaries of American financial legislation and that of 
other countries, with 250,000,000 people of India (as well 

91 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

as the United States) paying her tribute, and all other 
modes of robbery only known to themselves and a select 
few, we find her with only $1447 per capita in gold, be- 
sides her absolute legal tender paper money, based in 
part on her national debt, first contracted 200 years 
ago, during the reign of Silly Billy the Satyr, the half- 
king and half-goat, her absolute paper being exchanged 
by the Bank of England for gold whenever the bank 
feels so disposed ; the banker does so readily and willing- 
ly, as it is only required to settle foreign balances by her 
people, until he deems it to his interest to post that "let- 
ter of license," when gold takes off the gloves and leaves 
the stage, for the champion, paper money, now enters 
the ring. Somewhat wonderful, isn't it? 

Let us go over the narrow straits and have the sturdy, 
honest Frenchman entertain us once more, and see how 
things stand in that country, the last to close her mints 
to the free coinage of silver. We find that after paying 
a war indemnity of $25 per capita of her population in 
gold to Germany, or $1,000,000,000, that she has now 
nearly as much as one and one-half, or $20.52 per capita, in 
gold as England has, or $250,000,000 more, and more than 
twice as .much paper, while her silver is almost twice that 
per capita of the greatest silver producing country in the 
world, the United States; or, France, $17.95 ; the United 
States, $8.18, all interchangeable and full legal tender. 
Stunningly surprising, isn't it? Yes, but not much more 
so than our chances of being Guv'nah. 

Now let us go over and see, wie es geht, mit Unser 
Fritz? who at the instigation of England, and in order, 
as both supposed it would do, to injure France, closed 
her mints in 1871 to the free coinage of silver, wdiich 
nation, Germany, has only $2.20 legal tender silver and 
only $2.16 legal tender paper per capita. About this time 
(or probably you have never heard of it), you may re- 
member, Germany received from France an amount 
which would be more than $20 gold per capita for her 
population of to-day, but chiefly because it declared for 
that honest money of yours, we find that, with all she 
had previously, she had so much, you may remember 

92 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

(or perhaps you have never heard of it) that she actually 
demonetized gold in 1857, ^^ well as the $20 per capita 
she received, that she has only now $12.12 gold per capita 
remaining. Poor Hans! Astonishing, isn't it? How it 
will assert itself in the markets of the world, with all 
these countries solvent and still existing! 

All persons wishing and hopefully watching for the in- 
solvency of their country, and untiring in their lifelong 
efforts to have it placed in the historical records of the 
nations of the past, might consistently endeavor to have 
all money tokens confined to that material, recognized to- 
day as a European international bullion, gold, by about 
the twenty-five principal commercial nations of the 
world, or possibly he might wish it made of silver, influ- 
enced thus by some secret fear or hope that its future 
conquerors might be numbered among the other 787,500,- 
000; but in case that either did not occur in time to suit 
him, and that gold was his favorite, and that his mind 
was fully made up to emigrate, the only country we 
know of that would stay by him would be Turkey. 

But before leaving it would be necessary to remember 
that money is not wealth, and but a medium of exchange 
to reduce the labor or burden of the distribution of nec- 
essary products or commodities, devised by the people 
and given sanction in law, by issue by the govern- 
ments, for the convenience of their own citizens only — 
not to be hoarded, not to equal actual wealth in volume 
of measures, to be doled out and kept regulated, so that 
every member of that society could procure, or have as 
near as possible a proportionate equal share in accord- 
ance with the legitimate, active industry or amount of 
business transacted in actual production or distribution, 
without any cost to the individual, except the cost of 
issuance, regulation, etc., or for the support only of the 
general government; if amassed or hoarded as wealth to 
be taxed similarly with wealth, together with a fine and 
penalty, for attempting to destroy its proper functions, 
and the same fine and penalty for attempting to charge 
interest for its use, which was never contemplated by 
society, nor never mentioned in the law creating it ; that 

93 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

all money is but a circulating medium of fractional, trans- 
ferable, measuring evidences of representative pieces of 
wealth, for if it measured all wealth, then less than one-six- 
teenth grain of gold would be the dollar, and that dollar 
be the one eighty billionth part of the United States's 
wealth, which now can only be estimated by a relatively 
figurative measure, as there is not now legal tender 
enough in the United States to buy, at market price, the 
City of New York; nor in Germany to buy Berlin; nor in 
England to buy London. So that an advocate of honest 
money, if he himself was strictly honest, whenever about 
to emigrate to his ideal society, would only take his pro- 
portionate share of the gold, $9.01, the per capita circula- 
tion, and on arriving in Turkey would find himself es- 
teemed as worth six average Turks, which would render 
him eligible for the office of side-social chum of the Sultan, 
while his former Government would yet be solvent and 
still exist. If gold was demonetized to-morrow we would 
possess and receive as much gold, if not more than be- 
fore, for it would become proportionately cheaper, caused 
by the loss of its former use and demand by a great 
nation, whose population is but one-eighteenth of those 
twenty-five countries, but who now possesses more than 
one-sixth of it all, or three times her distributive share 
of the coin gold of the world. 

But still Davy, knowing that the volume of money in 
actual circulation determines the price of our merchant- 
able or transferable or real wealth, would have us compara- 
tively measure all that by a medium which is now only one- 
third of our volume of legal tender, solely for the purpose 
of reducing the price we now receive for what other na- 
tions are compelled to buy from us, while it is impossible 
for us to assist in the regulation of the price of what we 
could do without, that is, what we purchase from others ; 
or, in other words, he wishes us to conform our financial 
system to suit their wishes in the premises, while they 
strictly regulate their own afifairs to suit themselves. In 
those twenty-five countries we find nine of them having 
the gold standard ; so we have in nine others gold and 
silver; so have we in all the countries, except Turkey, 

94 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

Egypt and Australia (they have silver or paper as 
legal tender, so have we) ; the only country not using 
paper or gold as legal tender is China; they use silver; 
so do we; the only country in Europe not using silver or 
paper as legal tender is Turkey. While it must be admit- 
ted that we do recognize gold and silver, still we cannot 
claim to be strictly in it with the Turk or Chinee. Find- 
ing so many people using gold and silver, we cannot, 
therefore, consistently advocate the feeding of all our 
gold and silver to the alligators; not at all. While ever 
you find these people willing to part with whatever we 
covet for either or any of our productions, why, by all 
means, preserve and increase them ; do not attempt to dis- 
card or discredit them ; any of them some day may com- 
pose the token of an honest dollar. 

We are now going to make what we judge a fair 
proposition to the Joneses and the Stoneses, their neigh- 
bors, "who want a dollar only that is worth lOO cents 
every day, and the world over, and its representative or 
promise to pay as good as itself." We must deferentially 
inform these gentlemen again that we are not creating 
legal tender that the inhabitants of the globe are to be, 
and must be, in their several jurisdictions bound by, and 
that they must use no other and vice versa ; and that the 
equal of an absolute dollar, a legal tender for all purposes, 
in the country where it is issued, can only be found in 
another absolute dollar, and any other promise to pay 
cannot equal it, and cannot be as good, for it is only 
counterfeit money, no matter with what agreeableness or 
willingness it may sometimes be exchanged. Further we 
will state that an absolute dollar is irredeemable except 
by its compulsory acceptance for all dues, and, further, 
that a promise-to-pay dollar is never or can never be re- 
deemed while it is compelled to re-enter the servitude 
from which it was previously ransomed by crafty, decep- 
tive trade or swap, but it is a thievish, fraudulent, dishon- 
est money, because, canceling debts to the unwary, the 
authority for which it never received from society. 

Now, then, if these gentlemen will only use their hon- 
est and all-powerful endeavors with the other twenty- 

95 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

four great powers of the earth to have them arrange 
it so that all will discard all of their legal terxder silver 
and paper money, which assists in setting a price on their 
good, and retain nothing but gold, which would leave 
them only $2.61 per capita in gold, instead of as now 
$7.03 of all legal tender, I think we could stand it — do 
you? — as our gold is $9.01, or three and one-half times as 
much as theirs, and we are now producing nearly the 
one-third of the total gold production of the world. For 
proof of our assertion we here give the statistics of the 
same, with silver also, so that we can, in the way of pri- 
vate information, publicly state that from 1792 to 1893 
we produced two-sevenths of all the gold, in any form 
known to exist in the world, and only one-eighth of the 
silver, so we are in pretty good shape to take the advice 
and gratefully please the laddies and lulus of London, 
and the chappies and chippies, or turbaned Turks of Con- 
stantinople : 

SOME INTERESTING STATISTICS FOR MONE- 
TARY STUDENTS. 

Most men in the eastern part of the United States sup- 
pose that the price of silver is constantly falling, wholly 
because the supply is constantly increasing. Our mono- 
metallic writers state that such is the fact, and their 
readers naturally believe they are telling facts. As silver 
is measured in gold, under our monometallic system, of 
course the increase in the production of silver can be 
measured only by comparison with the production of 
gold, each by weight. We give herewith figures to show 
whether the claim is correct. As the ratio is now about 
twenty-three of silver to one of gold by value, the produc- 
tion should be in the same ratio by weight, if the claim 
of our eastern writers be correct. Our figures are taken 
from the United States Mint report. The following table 
shows that from 1493 to 1871, a period of 378 years, the 
production of the two metals averaged 16.8 ounces of 
silver to one of gold. 

96 



PLAIN ECOXOMIC FACTS 

GENERAL SURVEY OF THE PRODUCTION OF GOLD AND SILVER IN 

THE YEARS 1 493- 1 885, AS CORRECTED BY DR. ADOLF 

SOETBEER IN THE SECOND EDITION OF 

HIS MATERIALIEN, 1 886. 





Weight. 


Period. 


Gold. 

annual 

average. 


Silver, 

annual 

average. 


Percentage. 




Gold. 


Silver. 


1493-1520 


Kilograms. 

5,800 

7,160 

8,510 

6,840 

7,380 

8,520 

8,300 

8,770 

9,260 

10,765 

12,820 

19,080 

24,610 

20,705 

17,790 

17,778 

11,445 

14,216 

20,289 

54,759 

199,388 

201,750 

185,057 

195,026 

173,904 

172,414 

149,137 


Kilograms. 

47,000 

90,200 

311,600 

299,500 

418,900 

422,900 

393,600 

366,600 

337,000 

341,900 

355,600 

431,200 

533,145 

652,740 

879,060 

894,150 

54n,770 

460,560 

596,450 

780,415 

886,115 

904,990 

1,101,150 

1.339,085 

1,969,425 

2,450,252 

2,861,709 


Per cent. 
11.0 
7.4 
2.7 
2.2 
1.7 
2.0 
2.1 
2.3 
2.7 
3.1 
3.5 
4.2 
4.4 
3.1 
2.0 
1.9 
2.1 
3.0 
3.3 
6.6 
18.4 
18.2 
14.4 
12.7 
8.1 
6.6 
5.0 


Per cent. 
RQ 


1521-1544 


Q2 6 


1545-1560 


97 3 


1561-1580 


97 8 


1581-16'>0 


98 3 


1601-1620 


98 


1621-1640 


97 9 


1641-1660 


97 7 


1661-1680 


97 3 


1681-1700 


96 9 


1701-1720 


96 5 


1721-1740 


95 8 


1741-1760 


95 6 


1761-1'; 80 


96 9 


1781-1800 


98 


1801-1810 

1811-1820 


98.1 
97 9 


1821-1830 


97 


1831-1840 


96.7 


1841-1850 


93 4 


1851-1855 


81.6 


I806-I86O 


81 8 


1861-1865 


85 6 


1866-1870 


87 3 


1871-1875 


91.9 


1876-1880 


93 4 


1881-1885 


95.0 



During- all this time the ratio adopted by different gov- 
ernments varied from fourteen to fifteen and one-half, 
and the monetary value of silver averaged fifteen ounces 
of silver to one of gold, while, as stated, the production of 
silver was 16.8 ounces to one of gold. It is evident that 

97 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 



the ratio of value of the two metals was influenced by i 
something besides their production. The only thing that * 
could have influenced it was the demand for them caused- 1 
by their monetary use, which was regulated by law. 

The next table shows the world's production of gold ! 
since 1873. Calculation of the value of gold, as the) 
United States Mint estimates it, shows an annual prod- \ 
uct of 5,190,298 ounces, while the next following table j 
shows that the production of silver during the same \ 
period averaged 87,532,105 ounces per year, or at the | 
rate of 16.8 ounces silver to one of gold, which is exactly -, 
what it averaged during the preceding 378 years. Of | 
course, it would be easy to take the product of one or two j 
years for comparison, and show results different from ' 
these. But no fair minded statistician w^ould do such a ! 
thing, because exceptional circumstances may cause the 
product of single years to be more or less than the aver- 
age product; upon exceptional years it is manifestly 1 
unfair to base an estimate. 



PRODUCT OF GOLD IN THE WORLD FOR THE CALENDAR YEARS 

1873-189I. 

Calendar Years. Value. 

1873 $96,200,000 

1874 90,750,000 

1875 97,500,000 

1876 103,700,000 

'^^77 1 14,000,000 

1878 1 19,000,000 

1879 109,000,000 

1880 106,500,000 

1881 103,000,000 

1882 102,000,000 



1883 95,400,000 

1884 101,700,000 

1^85 108,400,000 

1^86 106,000,000 

^^^7 105,775,000 



I""" 110,197,000 

1889 123,489,000 

98 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

1890 120,475,000 

1891 125,300,000 

Total. $2,038,386,000 

Average per year, 5,190.298 ounces ; value, $107,283,473. 



PRODUCTION OF SILVER FOR THE WORLD FOR THE CALENDAR 
YEARS 1873-189I. 

Fine ounces Commercial 
Calendar Years. (troy). value. 

1873 63,267,000 $82,120,000 

1874 55,300,000 70,673,000 

1875 62,262,000 77,578,000 

1876 67,753,000 78,322,000 

1877 62,648,000 75,240,000 

1878 73,476,000 84,644,000 

1879 74,250,000 83,383,000 

1880 74,791,000 85,636,000 

1881 78,890,000 89,777,000 

1882 86,470,000 98,230,000 

1883 89,177,000 - 98,986,000 

1884. • 81,597,000 90,817,000 

1885 91,652,000 97,564,000 

1886 93,276,000 92,772,000 

1887 96,124,000 94,031,000 

1888 108,827,000 102,283,000 

1889 125,420,000 117,268,000 

i8qo 134,380,000 141,100,000 

1891 143,550,000 141,827,000 

Total • 1,663,110,000 $1,802,251,000 

Average for 19 years, 87,532,105 ounces; commercial 
value, $94,855,315- 

If any man can read these figures and still believe that 
the low price of silver is caused solely by an increase 
in production he is certainly strangely constituted. For 
200 years the price of silver in the world remained prac- 
tically steady at from thirteen to fifteen and one-half of 

99 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS , 

silver to one of gold, no matter how much the ratio ofi 
production of the two metals varied. This steadiness of': 
price was due wholly to the fact that all over the worldj; 
silver was coined free, and it had a constant legal value.i 
The closing of the mints of the principal nations of theji 
world to free coinage in 1873-1875 destroyed this use for;; 2 
it, which had existed ever since historical records began, ir 
In other words, it reduced the demand, and the invariable jjc 
law of supply and demand caused its price to decline. We 
have shown above that there has been no material change |Ji 
in the preceding four centuries, so why should there now!:i 
be any change in the legal ratio of monetary value ? j^ 

I 

U. S. STATISTICS. 6 

\ 

It is interesting, as having a bearing on the business 
and monetary question, to study the increase in the min-; 
eral products of this country, year by year, in connec-i 
tion with the increase of population. The most practica-i 
ble way to estimate the value of such statistics is to cal-i 
culate the production per capita. It is quite evident that! 
a population of 63,000,000 should produce more than aj 
population of 50,000,000. But to find out whether there 
has been any increase corresponding with the increase ofi 
the population the production per capita must be taken. | 
The census returns of the United States for 1880 and 1890 1 
give figures on which we can base this calculation. There I 
have been decided increases per capita in railroad mile- \ 
age, agricultural and mineral products and manufactures, | 
all of which show that business has increased even more j 
than the population. For present purposes we can use ' 
only a few of the leading mineral products of 1880 and j 
1890, per capita of population. The increases have been ! 
as follows : Bituminous coal, .8 ton to 1.6 ton ; anthracite, 
.5 ton to .75 ton ; iron, 135 to 262 pounds ; copper, 1.2 to 4.5 
pounds ; lead, .9 to 6.4 pounds ; zinc, .9 to 2.5 pounds. 

What has been the increase per capita in the money 
metals, in which all other things are measured? Silver 
shows an increase of from .8 to .9 of an ounce per capita, 
the smallest increase shown of any mineral product, and 
gold shows a decrease from .y2 to .52 of an ounce. 1 

100 ■ ' ' 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

These are statistics which are, as we read them, elo- 
quent about the financial question. They say as plainly 
as words can speak that here is a nation with a rapidly 
and widely expanding trade, trying to adopt as a money 
i| metal the only mineral whose production is falling off, 
and is even trying to rob silver of its monetary power, 
notwithstanding the white metal shows the smallest in- 
crease per capita of the metal products. 

We have no data regarding the world's increase of pop- 
ulation on which to base any estimate of the world's per 
capita production of gold and silver. But if any one, from 
any economical standpoint, can find in these statistics any 
good reason why silver should not have been continued 
as a money metal, he has a different basis to stand upon 
than any which is laid down in the books. 



PRODUCT OF GOLD 

1792 

Years. 
April 2, 1792 — 

July 31, 1834. 

Dec. 31, 1844. 

1845 

July 31, 1834— 
1846 

1847 

1848 

1849 

1850 

1851. 

1852 

1853 

1854 

1855 

1856 

1857 

1858 

1859 

i860 

1861 



AND SILVER IN THE UNITED STATES FROM 
-1844, AND ANNUALLY SINCE. 



Gold. 



Silver. 



114,000,000 Insignificant 
7,500,000 $250,000 
1,008,327 50,000 



1. 139.357 
889,085 
10,000,000 
40,000,000 
50,000,000 
55,000,000 
60,000,000 
65,000,000 
60,000,000 
55,000,000 
55,000,000 
55,000,000 
50,000,000 
50,000,000 
46,000,000 
43,000,000 

lOI 



50,000 

50,000 

50,000 

' 50,000 

50,000 

50,000 

50,000 

50,000 

50,000 

50,000 

50,000 

50,000 

500,000 

100,000 

150,000 

2,000,000 



Total. 

$14,000,000 
7,750,000 
1,058,327 

1,189,357 
939,085 
10,050,000 
40,050,000 
50,050,000 
55,050,000 
60,050,000 
65,050,000 
60,050,000 
55,050,000 
55,050,000 
55,050,000 
50,500,000 
50,100,000 
46,150,000 
45,000,000 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

1862 39,200,000 . 4,500,000 43,700,000 

1863 40,000,000 8,500,000 48,500,000 

1864 46,100,000 11,000,000 57,100,000 

1865 53,225,000 11,250,000 64,475,000 

1866 53,500,000 10,000,000 63,500,000 

1867 51,725,000 13,500,000 65,225,000 

1868 48,000,000 12,000,000 60,000,000 

1869 49,500,000 12,000,000 61,500,000 

1870 50,000,000 16,000,000 66,000,000 

1871 43,500,000 23,000,000 66,500,000 

1872 36,000,000 28,750,000 64,750,000 

1873 36,000,000 35,750,000 71,750,000 

1874 33,500,000 37,300,000 70,800,000 

1875. 33,400,000 31,700,000 65,100,000 

1876 39,900,000 38,800,000 78,700,000 

1877 46,900,000 39,800,000 86,700,000 

1878 51,200,000 45,200,000 96,400,000 

1879 38,900,000 40,800,000 79,700,000 

1880 36,000,000 39,200,000 75,200,000 

1 88 1 34,700,000 43,000,000 77,700,000 

1882 32,500,000 46,800,000 79,300,000 

1883 ......... 30,000,000 46,200,000 76,200,000 

1884. 30,800,000 48,800,000 79,600,000 

1885 31,800,000 51,600,000 83,400,000 

1886 35,000,000 51,000,000 86,000,000 

1887 33,000,000 53.350.000 86,350,000 

1888 33.175.000 59,195,000 92,370,000 

1889 32,800,000 64,646,000 97,446,000 

1890 32,845,000 70,465,000 103,310,000 

1891 33,175,000 75,416,500 108,591,500 

Total. . . . $1,904,881,769 $1,073,172,500 $2,978,054,269 

The population of Europe is about 458,000,000, their 
stock of gold $2,602,000,000 and their stock of uncovered 
paper and silver $2,540,000,000, while our gold is given 
as $604,000,000 or our gold equals nearly one-fourth 
of all Europe while our population is about the one- 
seventh, which would only enable them to lay or set a 
price on their goods or property of about the one-half of 
their present valuation, or as is $5.70 gold to $11.25 ^^^ 

102 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

kinds of legal tender as it is at present ; and which would 
still enable us to set a price on our goods or property, of 
I nearly double that of theirs, or in the proportion of $5.70 
I their per capita gold is to our $9.01 per capita gold, and 
I instead of injuring this country to your hoped for extent, 
you see we would still be found solvent, existing and way 
I up on top of the heap, being like a rubber ball, the more 
■ violent and dynamic the attempt to fling or cast it to 
or in the earth, the more astonishingly beautiful the re- 
bound; all this is simply because we have resources and 
the valorous and progressive brains to develop them. 

So we promise you that we will have the desired metal, 
prescribed by usurers, for an honest dollar, that will suit 
you, if you succeed in getting or winning over those 458,- 
000,000 to agree to the plan. Possibly, the governments 
might be coerced by the usurers into agreeing; but what 
about the people? Whose ideas of the per capita amount, 
now extant and of the prescriptive valuation of property 
for centuries, are so intimately blended with their home, 
and all that is dear to them in life ; we fear that the Stone- 
Joneses would have a bigger task than brains, or than 
they could accomplish, for all those of us, having any 
considerable intercourse with Europeans, soon learn that 
they are not such consummate fools, as some would-be 
financiers foolishly suppose, that Americans are. 

Such gentlemen desire all this change, and reduction 
in money metal, and consequent reduction and change in 
all valuations or prices of American commodities, except 
gold, money and metal, so that they can use that dollar in 
the markets of the world, at its face value,' and would 
destroy and demonetize all their silver and paper money, 
in order to consummate that fact, or in order not to have 
Davy fooled again, when visiting Paris, by a Sacre Mon 
Dieu cart-wheel dollar. But it is a fact (although you 
may have never heard about it) that the gold dollar you 
so desire can now be given you for greenbacks, or even 
those 50 cent silver certificates at the U. S. Treasury. 

So you see that the "promise to pay" silver dollar is 
rendered absolutely as good as gold by the abnormal 
action, one-man law, or ukase of a single individual, by 
the name of Carlisle, a recently converted devotee of 

103 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

Shermanism, or that religion known as "the devil take 
the hindmost"; so that now whenever you require gold, 
to settle your European trade balance against you and 
your explosive-oleaginous goods, or before visiting Paris 
again, you will know better how to act. If we come to 
the bare gold standard, your balance against you would 
be larger, because of less current price by you received 
for your goods from them, for then they could obtain it 
here from others for less than before, because labor and its 
productions would be reduced in price, in accordance 
with the reduction in the volume of then^ honest dollar. 
You would have us lower and regulate the prices of all 
our internal commerce and real property, merely to ac- 
commodate your foreign customers, who are forced through 
sheer necessity to buy from us. Let us see how much of 
a figure our foreign trade cuts in our total sales, pur- 
chases, production and consumption of the comforts or 
necessities of life, and our annual increase of quasi-im- 
perishable wealth. According to the statistics of the 
U. S. Treasury Department, for the past twenty years 
we averaged a total export of what would average now 
about $10.50 per capita or about $740,000,000 per annum, 
but our exports are decreasing, that is according to the 
amount of money we receive for them, so from decreas- 
ing circulation and increasing population and business, as 
a nation, and through our own fault, we are constantly 
losing; we find that for the five years ending 1884 our 
yearly mcome from exports amounted to $810,000,000, 
and for the five years ending 1889 it was only an annual 
average of $714,000,000 which discrepancy could not be 
accounted for by the surplus production of, or exporta- 
tion of, India, nor of all the world, but is accounted for 
by all authorities on the subject (as we ourselves are all 
well aware) by the fall in prices, arising from demonetiza- 
tion of silver and contraction or decrease of our circulat- 
ing medium. 

At a conservative estimate we annually consume in 
provisions, clothing, etc., at least $300 per capita or 
twenty-eight times that of our foreign sales which are 
about $10.50. This must be all sold and purchased many 
times over, either by money, or labor in connection with 

104 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

its past fruits, and the forces of nature. Our quasi-per- 
manent improvements, such as constructions of all kinds, 
in or on the earth, as building, reclaiming, renovating, 
etc., with our other chattel increase of the fruits of labor 
such as machines, etc., cattle, etc., amount to well over 
$15,000,000,000 per annum, about three-fourths of that, of 
what we consume, or at least $220 more per annum per 
capita, which has to be bought and sold, either by money 
or labor, and its past fruits, which is twenty-one times 
that of our exports. 

So that our internal or home commerce of our crea- 
tions or productions is forty-nine times greater than our 
foreign sales. And as in the past twenty years we have 
averaged for imports $9 per capita per annum for what 
we traded foreigners for — which were principally luxu- 
ries, or what we could get along without, but it must be 
added to our consumption — which makes the total nearly 
fifty times more than our foreign sales, that the Davys 
would have us regulate all our aftairs by, which might 
leave some folks to conclude, to estimate such advocates, 
to amount to at least the one-fiftieth part of a true 
American. To some simple but honest-minded people, it 
looks as though we would be better ofif, and understand 
our own afifairs a great deal beter, if we neither bought 
nor sold an honest dollar's worth abroad. 

Of course, the import duty on the above $9, reckon- 
ing it at 50 per cent, ad valorem, which would leave it 
$3, is fairly robbing the farmer, who would not use $9 
worth of tea and coffee in two years, and that is about all 
the imports he sees, except sugar, occasionally. Now, to 
ask the farmer to subscribe $3 a year, in order to keep 
up the price of labor and commodities to a range of prices 
that he is always hoping to receive, and also willing 
to pay, in order to compel foreigners to pay a fair living 
price for our productions, which are absolute necessities, 
while what we purchase generally from the foreigner is 
dear at any price, as one bushel of wheat is of more real 
value than 100 cases of extra dry champagne, so the 
$3 contribution is simply an outrageous imposition. 

But for this one-fiftieth part of our trade they would 
have us upset our whole economic system, established at 

105 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

our nation's birth, which brought us until recently un- 
precedented prosperity; have us reduce the prices re- 
ceived for our goods to one-third of their present amount 
or exchangeable value, and reduce our standing among 
the nations of the earth 200 per cent., and all for what? 
To please Rothschilds and the Bank of England, which 
is virtually the Government of England, and why? Be- 
cause this transitory foreign element fears us, knowing 
that we possess the intelligence, if rightly directed and 
the means or resources sufficient at our command to 
thwart all their schemes and plans for the financial en- 
slavement of the world, which they are ever untiring in, 
in the hope that they may come out safe in the inevita- 
ble social crash that will, sooner than anticipated, dis- 
figure European geography. And knowing that we are 
intelligent and strong enough by practical application 
to disprove the honesty or equity of their political econ- 
omy or the justice or probit}^ that they uphold and claim 
of the tribute or interest for money system, just as we 
disprove by our own superbly existing illustration their 
heinous claim to the righteousness of inequality, unequal 
rights and that phantasmagoria of divine right. 

And in this connection we thought that the great majority 
of our intelligent Southern brethren had entirely given up 
that wild, chimerical idea, for we learn on good author- 
ity that the war is over for nearly thirty years now ; we 
hear it rumored that the reconstruction day has passed, 
and we know that this great majority is thoroughly rec- 
onciled to the new order of things ; but, at the same time, 
it is hard for some of the intolerant soreheads or natural 
malcontents to forget, or go back on their ophidian 
friends, who had to pay in an impartial, foreign, open 
court a fine of $15,500,000 in honest money for their de- 
ceptive friendship. This intelligent majority needed no 
more or further proof of their damnable duplicity than 
that ''Hazzard Circular." Their little game then and 
now was and is to control labor and its productions by 
controlling the issue of money and labor^s wages, remem- 
ber not to own them and be taxed with their care — see? 
So there may be a grain of consolation in the fact that 

106 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

it is not only the colored laborers they want to control, 
but also the dirty, mean, white trash as well. 

In order to define "honest dollar," which is one of the 
gaudily tinselled catch-phrases of the deep, cunning finan- 
cial fox that he periodically conjures up, intended for 
the deciphering disport of the hounds, whenever he is 
driven to bay, so as to permit his aberrant, abject brain 
to devise another feculent, frothy, financial falsity; with 
which he meets the uncontradictory reasonings of just 
and equitable political economy or monetary measures; 
"honest money" being his latest, and following such 
foamy conundrums as intrinsic value, redeemable in gold, 
good in the world's markets, danger of too much, un- 
healthy speculation, depreciated currency, ''promise-to- 
pay" money the best the world ever saw, etc., etc.; it 
is necessary to remember that a government can only 
enact economic laws for the government and guidance 
of those within the limits of its own jurisdiction. 

That the law or government can only decree the spe- 
cific materials from which it is to be made, regulate the 
value of coins and foreign coins, regarding their relative 
weights or monetary value of any circulating money, 
such as gold, silver or paper, etc., and regulate the 
amount, so that all or the greater number may have a 
full and fair opportunity to derive those benefits from it 
intended for it by an industrious society, inferentially en- 
tering a community, all willing to mutually assist each 
other by that kind of actual labor to which each being 
IS best adapted, and no drones or scalawags, living by 
their wits; which monetary regulating power is dele- 
gated to government by society, but not to abuse by 
special privileges. 

That all money issued by such mortal government is 
simply fiat money, regardless of what intrinsic qualities 
may remain latent in it, or lost to mankind, while doing 
service as tokens of the law, or regardless of whatever 
labor cost expended to produce it. That our vulgar 
senses prove to us that the Great Creator in His design 
of all nature never endowed any of the tfiaterials which 
money ever has been composed of, except slaves, with 
procreant powers, either through pistil germination or 

107 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

gestation; therefore, we know that it cannot possess that 
attribute known as volition, and is therefore an uncrea- 
tive, impotential, inert element, that can neither increase 
nor decrease of itself any of its v'ery limited intrinsic 
qualities or value, whether acting as money tokens or 
shirt studs, but is an inert instrument or element in the 
hands, or at the diction, of the law. 

But it may be made the instrument, as money tokens, 
of the power of dishonest officials in or with national 
authority in the adjudication, adjustment and dispensa- 
tion of economic laws or regulations; or through the 
arrant avaricious design and manipulation by those who 
unjustly possess it in such abnormal quantities that it 
seems to, and they really subvert its originally ideo- 
graphic, intentionally beneficent and universally equita- 
ble design, the chief principle of such design being that 
it must never of itself, actively unaided by the possessor, 
under any circumstances, yield any increment to others 
but to government for its legitimate expenses for con- 
tinuous issuance, parity and regulation. 

Such a dishonest or machinating egoistic official, or 
money mule, may with their power use a money of spe- 
cific material or kind in the hope of confining the volume 
of money to their desired limit, by giving one prominence 
and endeavoring to debase another, in the hope of driv- 
ing it out from the volume and thereby decreasing that 
volume, for their unhallowed gain; like they now give a 
wider and more prominent propagation to gold than any 
other money factor, using it as a tool to dishonor, there- 
fore constituting it the apparent debauchee of its female 
companion of a more honorable and yielding nature, sil- 
ver; or may use it even to degrade its eminently flexible 
but inviolable sister, greenback. 

In the foregoing or any analogous case gold is the un- 
conscious tool or element of dishonesty, as is silver or 
paper, or as is the law, which may be disobeyed or per- 
verted for personal or party gain, advantage or aggran- 
dizement ; therefore, a money may be dishonored by dis- 
honest, disobedient or discriminating officials, or by de- 
graded, derogatory, decimating dealers in money, but only 
for that length of time that the machinations of traitorous 

io8 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

vultures may be said to rule the roost ; but society, which 
delegated to legislative representatives the power to 
enact laws making all forms of money of equal function 
or legal tender qualities without discrimination, will soon 
be heard from in unmistakable terms and in good time 
with the following peremptory demand. 

Their demand will be somewhat as that all money 
shall be issued by government only, direct from govern- 
ment to the people, through a United States financial or 
fiiscal circulating monetary department, to be conduct- 
ed somewhat similar to the Post Ofhce Department; such 
department to be created and provided for immediately; 
that all money issued, or to be issued, except national 
bank notes, which must be withdrawn, shall be inter- 
changeable and full legal tender for all dues, debts or 
taxes of whatever nature within the boundaries or juris- 
diction of the United States (not Europe, as we should 
pay more attention to our own affairs, and not continue 
to make the world's clown of ourselves by meddling in 
the European monetary system, that does not concern 
us to the one-fiftieth part of that of our own and the one- 
thousandth part would be nearer the wisest fact, for he 
who will persist in doing business in the markets of 
the world had better cross either ocean and put up a 
stall). 

That no interest, tax or increment shall be charged 
for its use by any one, or corporation, to any individual, 
except by government only, to defray the expenses of 
issuance, regulation, circulation, records, etc., or for the 
support of the general government, or for appropriations 
for public improvements or other progressiveness. That 
all money above five times the amount of the per capita 
circulation, reasonably known to be in the possession 
of any person in the United States (not in Europe) shall 
be proportionally taxed as so much real or visible prop- 
erty for the support of government. 

That all persons shall keep on deposit in the United 
States depositories, until needed for actual business of a 
productive or distributive nature, all money over five 
times the per capita amount, for the purpose of enabling 
government to properly determine the amount needed for 

109 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

a prudent and equitable circulation. That money left 
on deposit for the purpose of government to loan to those 
furnishing proper security, such money shall be free of 
taxtion to such depositor; but if deposited, and not for 
.loaning purposes, then it shall be subject to taxation for 
all such money over the exempted amount. 

Whatever money may be collected as duty on imports, 
that money, composed of the same material, be collected 
by customs officers as money exacted in payment for 
such goods by the government of the country, or parties 
from which the goods are purchased or produced, in 
order to enable the government to more readily ex- 
change that kind of mone}^ for any legal tender mone)^ 
of the United States, for the purpose only of enabling 
commercial traders with foreign countries to pay their 
trade balances in the bullion preferred by such country. , 

Should that country prefer gold, and that our volume 
of gold is less than our silver volume, then the gold 
duty shall be increased accordingly from time to time, 
and vice versa in the case of silver. If the money exacted 
by the .foreign government or merchant be gold, then the duty 
shall be collected or paid in gold ; if it be silver, then it 
shall be. collected in silver; if it be paper money, for 
which the United States is pledged for its exchange, then 
the customs officers may accept that country's paper 
money to an amount equal to the annual amount of our 
cost of maintaining our foreign relations with such coun- 
try. 

Now for ''honest money," which is all money issued 
direct to the people by government, is and must be hon- 
est, even in the most abstract sense, which, w^hile within 
the jurisdiction of that government it performs, through 
the law, all the functions which was decreed for it or it 
was endowed with, no matter whether paper, silver or 
gold compose its tokens, or that they fluctuate from one 
cent per pound to $i,ooo per ounce. 

If the greenback is received, which it is to-day, for the 
payment of duties on imports, and to-morrow that privi- 
lege is denied to importers, or it is not received as before, 
that does not make it dishonest or depreciate it, although 
designing knaves may decry it, because it has lost none 

no 






PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

of its debt-liquidating qualities, for it is obligatory on 
the creditor to receive it in payment of all debts pro- 
vided for or designated on the back. If the Treasury 
to-day, as it is now doing, exchanges gold for silver cer- 
tificates and to-morrow it stops that privilege or accom- 
modation, such action does not depreciate it or annul 
any of its monetary powers, or debt-cancelling qualities, 
or provisions, although advocates of scarce money may 
embrace such an event or opportunity for exposing their 
avaricous depravity or economic ignorance by attempt- 
ing to clamorously vilify it; may we say they sometimes 
meet with that measure of success by bringing joyful sat- 
isfaction to misanthropists. 

No power can depreciate money or detract from its 
legal tender qualities until altered or revoked by law. 
True, they may discriminate against it, and thereby 
criminate themselves in the judgment of all intelligent, 
impartial, honorable people. A government or an official 
usurps the prerogatives of the people whenever either 
discriminates against any form of the people's money, 
whose coinage and regulation has been plainly provided 
for in that constitution which binds that society or people to- 
gether, as has been done with silver in closing the mints 
to its coinage without first consulting the whole people 
in the form of an amendment to the Constitution. 

Silver certificates and Treasury notes are both now 
(1894) exchanged at the Treasury for gold. The silver 
certificate calls for, or promises, one dollar's worth of 
silver or coin and is exchanged for gold. Does that make 
it honest money? The Treasury note or greenback is full 
legal tender, except for customs duties, interest on the public 
debt and payment of United States bonds (what a farcical 
financial comedy!), and yet it is freely exchanged for gold 
at the Treasury. For all other purposes the Treasury 
note or silver certificate or the silver dollar are known 
equally as a legal tender dollar for all debts and dues, the 
same as the greenback, but the recent convert to Sher- 
manism, or the Shermanation Army, decides that he will 
not exchange it for gold, nor pay it out for services ren- 
dered by government servants or accidental, temporary 
employes, the same as a treasury note, certificate or gold 

III 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

dollar, while for all transactions or debts between the 
government and individuals, individuals and the govern- 
ment, and between individuals, with the above excep- 
tion, the silver dollar has the same debt-paying powers 
as gold, yet it is stored in the Treasury and not coined 
and issued as it should, in the delusive hope of having 
all the people believe that all their rational, common horse 
sense has fled, and thus reduce the wages of labor and the 
price of its productions to the European level, at which 
level bastardly profligates may lofl and roll in splendor 
and rule in state. What egoistical, equivocal duplicity 
for a public servant to indulge in, and thus goad the 
patience and ridiculousl}^ insult the perspicacity of an 
overindulgent, intelligent people, merely to receive the 
paying smile of that parasitic weevil of industry, the in- 
terest fakir! 

All money not coined or created by government in 
conformity with the law, and not issued by government 
direct to the people as their medium of exchange, is 
money, but illegal and dishonest if it is in any manner 
passed off on the unsuspecting individual who, without 
scrutiny, may carelessly accept it in payment of any legal 
debt whatever, as its not being a legal tender, but which 
is virtually a forgery on absolute money or a deceitful 
imitation of it, and can strictly be called nothing else but 
a counterfeit ; for instance, such a note as a national bank 
note, or a coin of base or non-money metal, or any other 
form or notes or tokens misrepresenting the relatively 
part-measuring representatives, or calculating or cipher- 
ing shadows of real values or life-conserving, necessitous 
commodities ; therefore, when such money circulates and 
stealthily performs any of the functions of absolute money 
it is dishonest money. Any other form of money is "hon- 
est money," whenever it can perform legally the func- 
tions for which it was created by law, to express the 
will of society, whether designing individuals or noisy 
bands of polished, greedy, legal plunder gatherers dis- 
criminate against it or not. 



112 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 



PART III. 

VALUE. INTRINSIC. EXTRINSIC. 

Intrinsic value confounded. — Banks have done so purposely. — In- 
trinsic and extrinsic defined and applied. — Diamond and lead-pencil. — • 
Intrinsic value of wool and cotton. Absolute intrinsic value com- 
modities of necessity.— Analysis of different foods. — Congressman 
Baker's tables of statistics. — Way to increase our gold. — Excerpts 
from Mr. Ernest Seyd's work on mintage, etc. — England a province 
of France. 

The word value, v^hen applied to money in a general 
way, is made use of in a rather indefinite manner or 
vague sense, the intrinsic value of which is almost uni- 
versally confounded, or was, with its monetary, commer- 
cial or fictitious value or standing, and should have but 
reference to its law-fixed or governing price, or general, 
mandatory-established quotation, instead of its true, in- 
trinsic or actual value. The word value in the commer- 
cial language of the world, is of a supremely flexible 
nature, yielding gracefully to the whims or fancies of 
the novice or the adept in the vernacular of business 
transactions, either of which, generally carry on busi- 
ness like an automaton, only requiring, as it were, a little 
oil to make things move happily, or, by way of incentive, a 
profit, no matter how it comes, but a profit, and rarely 
stopping to investigate from what source money re- 
ceives its virtue. This condition of things is cautiously 
aided and abetted by those to whose interest it is to keep 
the masses, engaged in industrial pursuits, from learn- 
ing the musty methods by which they are bilked into 
parting with real labor productions for the use of what 
they themselves have in common created without labor 
for their own convenience. The modus operandi of the 
abettors is the vociferous denunciation of he who would 
honestly inquire how it is that he, who by his labor pro- 
duces most, enjoys the least of nature's gifts, and on 
detecting, if he should righteously denounce the robbing 

113 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

scheme, then woe is his, for Webster's unabridged does 
not produce all the employed abusive and derisive epi- 
thets thunderously showered on him by the venal serfs 
of a mercenary, pandering press. 

Value has two qualifying terms, which are widely, but 
unadvisedly or inadvertently, used by some, and cun- 
ningly and bafflingly used by others, in connection with 
money; they are intrinsic and extrinsic or monetary. 
Under intrinsic may be grouped internal, genuine, inher- 
ent, essential, real, etc., with their respectively qualified 
properties of element, virtue, quality, attribute, merit or 
worth, etc. ; such as, for instance, internal or inherent ele- 
ment, inherent attribute, essential quality, real merit, 
etc., etc. Under extrinsic may be grouped external or 
legal tender, which, as the name implies, external quality, 
is but the illustrative application of the law, and as the 
law cannot create intrinsic qualities in any material, then 
those virtues named or expressed, but unfortunately sup- 
posed by a few to exist, must be the opposite of intrinsic, 
and are therefore extrinsic, outward or foreign. As to 
outward or foreign, the material composing the piece or 
token of itself has no debt-cancelling attribute, element 
or power, which power exists only in the minds of the in- 
dividuals to any transaction which arises from the knowl- 
edge that law stipulates its numerical measure, or figura- 
tive representation ; that such power, therefore, not being 
an essential element of the material, it must be imaginary 
or suppositious, and but satisfies the mind by its legal 
power, which must still remain outside or foreign to the 
material element of the token or honest dollar. 

Intrinsic, real, or actual value is possessed only and in 
relative quantities and qualities by those substances or ele- 
ments or forces of nature that tend to preserve and con- 
serve in realit)^ and not in theory, the human race. And 
whatever tends in a cumulative way to supply the wants 
and necessaries, the comforts or conveniences, the luxu- 
ries or fanciful desires of life, in a transmutative way, 
or any animate or inanimate object or material element, 
in accordance with its specific degree of power, in mate- 
rially lessening the burdens or hardships of man, or labor 
previously endured in order to comfortably exist, or tend- 

114 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

mg in any way to &pecifically add to his normally ordi- 
nate, progressive comforts, or by lessening the inclem- 
ence of the elements, or any or all of which, in fact, is an 
absolute condition to the preservation, conservation and 
longevity of the human family, according to the relative 
qualities they possess, may be said to possess or have 
intrinsic value, and none other, from an earthly, natural 
or human standpoint. 

Other things or materials may be said to have intrin- 
sic value, and undoubtedly have, but must be classed as 
latent or potential, since there is nothing in nature but 
has had a fixed purpose or design or material duty to per- 
form, and since scientists go so far as to assert their belief 
that all elem.ents can be resolved into a very few, it may 
be advisable not to attempt to penetrate to deeply into 
the mysteries of nature, but estimate those elements 
with which we are at best but slightly acquainted by 
the palpable and tangible benefits we derive from them, 
which only we intend to do, as we are not dealing with 
the subject of technical tellic materiality. 

By way of a subsidiary illustration it may be well to 
here contrast the intrinsic value and market price, or 
commercial estimate, or quotation, of two different ap- 
pearing materials, both of which have a wide or large 
sale. They both are the well-known diamond and lead 
pencil, the essential element in both being the same, car- 
bon, that great element for generating heat. The one, 
graphite, contains 99 per cent, of carbon, though some- 
times erroneously called blacklead. One of its intrinsic 
properties is that, in this form or construction by nature, 
it is very infusible, and is made into crucibles for melt- 
ing or fusing metals ; those sticks in the electric arc lights 
are chiefly composed of carbon in this form ; another 
intrinsic quality it possesses is hardness, which, as it 
does not much exceed one, renders it very valuable as 
a marking material on bright substances, such as paper, 
wood, etc., as the lead pencil. 

While writing the words lead pencil, the thought 
flashes across the mind, what incalculably actual bene- 
fits man has derived from its use as a real factor in the 
spread of enlightenment, that matrix of human progress ! 

115 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

And how docile ! Wtih what ease and willingness it will 
allow itself to be chained by that concatenation of ever- 
changing, tangling, crooked marks or puzzling hiero- 
glyphics, to that of its own elementary relative, of such 
immeasurable intrinsic value, for all human edification 
and improvements, paper, and when thus for life or eter- 
nity are happily joined in wedlock by the vulgar hand of 
man to give expression to the good idea that never dies, 
and how lovingly and peacefully they fly off together in 
unity and harmony, bearing those welcome messages 
of anxious inquiry and soulful greeting, mayhap to the 
melting soul of mother, and thoughts and ideas growing 
into certainties that fructify blessings of joy and happi- 
ness, peace and love, comforts and lasting pleasures to 
be added to the bare necessities and drudgery of old, even 
to the dark recesses of the most, lowly Hindoo home, for 
that thankless ingrate, man. We would keep on in that 
strain, but, remembering that we are not now trying to 
deal with sentiment, but intrinsic value, we will move 
on. 

The intrinsic properties of graphite are the direct op- 
posites of those of the diamond, which is composed when 
pure solely of carbon, but which is entirely consumed 
by heat; so it does not possess that intrinsic property of 
resisting fire, like graphite, and therefore not so valu- 
able. Its hardness, the only intrinsic quality it pos- 
sesses, is known as ten — it can be used for cutting glass, 
but this is of very little importance, as there are sev- 
eral materials that will do as well, such as hardened 
steel, all kinds of corundum, bort or massive impure dia- 
monds, etc., so all the intrinsic merit it possesses that 
are known to man only places it very low down in the 
scale of commodities ; it may be safely estimated at 
one-half that of graphite. 

But such is the unaccountable, inordinate, uncontrollable 
desire of the witless, wayward women and diaphanous, 
dudish dandies for bauble, show and sheen that, while 
graphite may be purchased for a few cents per pound, 
the weight of one-tenth of a silver dime — about four 
grains, or one carat — of white, blue, black or rose-colored 
diamond, will average about $40 per carat. So much for 

116 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

our so-called intrinsic standard of value and honest 
money. The scientific difference between the two is what 
is termed a different atomic relation, or molecular ar- 
rangement in the crystallization. 

The mherent, internal or intrinsic value of cotton may 
be relatively or comparatively arrived at in contrast with 
wool, both being fibrous and easily spun into threads of 
about equal degrees of fineness and coarseness for all 
practical purposes, but the wool, on account of its poros- 
ity and warmth, is prized in preference to cotton, as it is 
more beneficial to man, hence its relative price, while 
under favorable auspices and conditions both might be 
produced in similar quantity at similar expenditure, al- 
though one is an animal and the other a plant produc- 
tion. Their intrinsic qualities or properties tend only 
in a cumulative way to man's comforts, conveniences and 
necessities, so that their real worth or benefits to man 
may vary from the standpoint, surrounding or condition 
of the individual ; for instance, a person under the tropical 
sun could not derive the same benefits from a heavy, 
woolen overcoat that he could serenely enjoy far north. 

While all of the normal, separate productions of na- 
ture, or labor and nature, as far as they go, or relatively, 
have similar intrinsic value, yet that value may be more 
beneficial to one individual than another; but the intrin- 
sic value never varies, although the market price does, 
but that comes from the imperfections of man and not of 
nature; it is as indestructible as nature itself. We can 
change its form, but never absolutely destroy it; but if 
we change the form of money by putting it in the cruset 
and melting it or by burning it, it is then visibly bullion 
or ashes and the money fi.at virtually destroyed, as if you 
would now melt $i,ooo in silver it would no longer be 
legal tender for any debts, and as bullion sell for about 
$480; its intrinsic properties and commercial value re- 
mained intact, but the money ones had fled to the land 
of doubt and conjecture. 

If greenbacks, silver certificates or counterfeit national 
bank notes were burned, you would have the ashes, and 
the money would be out at interest as an "honest dollar." 
While any substance or commodity remains in a normal 

117 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

or sound condition its intrinsic value may be compara- 
tively appraised, and that is all in this connection, for as 
long as the world moves eastward it shall always remain 
by man undetermined. Man uses such commodities as 
cotton, wool*, etc., externally, but from the immemorial 
usage of them, peremptorily demanded by our climate 
and the injunctions of civilization, they have become to 
man as absolutely necessary for the preservation of life 
as any one of several of the alimental products of nature; 
hence the price, which seems high, compared to food. 

All substances or materials that enter into the human 
system and happily assimilate with it in a transmutative 
v/ay and all those that are externally applied for the 
preservation of life or healthy are of absolute necessity 
and of first intrinsic value from a human or mortal point 
of view or standpoint, and none other whose determined 
intrinsic properties by man's imperfect methods can 
be so classed. Among the alimental class are several 
minerals, such as calcium, fluorine, chlorine, sodium, car- 
bon, phosphorus, etc., and but two metals, one mag- 
nesium, which assimilates or is part of the bones of the 
system, in the shape of a phosphate, but a very small 
amount; the other and more important thing being iron, 
the only metal that is really essential to man's existence. 
So neither silver nor gold stands any show for apprecia- 
tion in the sane man's mind. 

It may be seen from the following table that the intrin- 
sic qualities or value, or life-giving properties of com- 
modities, are not a correct criterion to go by in setting 
an exchangeable price or market value on them, as there 
are several conditions surrounding each one that must 
be taken into consideration before determining their rela- 
tive value. While some may contain more nitrates, car- 
bonates and phosphates, yet through, or by, the arrange- 
ment of their particles they may not be as easy of assimi- 
lation as others, and may be more so to one individual 
than another, which is popularly described as — well, it don't 
agree with me, or ah ! beefsteak is my favorite, or the 
New Englander could not pray right if he went to church 
on Sunday morning without eating beans with poppers in 
them. 

ii8 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

ANALYSIS OF DIFFERENT FOODS IN THEIR NATURAL CONDITION. 
(according to HASWELL.) 



Apples 

Barley 

Beans 

Beef 

Buckwheat 

Cabbage. ....... 

Chicken 

Corn, North' n... 
Corn,South'n. . . 

Cucumbers 

Lamb 













o 


















« 
















n 




.•^ 


-g 




^ 










5 


10 


1 


84 


17 


69t% 


3,^TT 


10 


24 


57^% 


3t^ 


14t«tt 


15 


80 


5 


50 


8i«w 


76A 


1 8 


14A 


4 


5 


1 


90 


19 


3i% 


4A 


73 


12 


T6 


1 


14 


31 


48 


3 


14 


l-A 


1 


A 


97 


11 


85,^^ 


^t"^ 


50 





1 


1 
1 


1- 

o 

1" 

1 

^# 
1 


Milk of Cow. 

Mutton . . 

Oats 


5 

17 
10 

P 

16 
15 


8 
40 

50 

4 
69^ 


Parsnips 

Pork 

Potatoes 

' ' sweet 
Rice. •. 


Turnips 

Veal 


Wheat....... 



s ^ 



43 



63 



NITRATES — Are that class which supplies waste of 
muscle. 

CARBONATES— Are that class which supplies lungs 
with fuel, and thus furnishes heat to the system, and 
supplies fat or adipose substances. 

PHOSPHATES — Are that class which supplies bones, 
brains and nerves, and gives vital power, both muscular 
and mental. 

From the above it appears that Southern corn produces 
most muscle and least fat, and contains enough phos- 
phates to give vital power to brain, and make bones 
strong. Mutton is the meat which should be eaten with 
Southern corn. 



RELATIVE VALUE OF FOODS, COMPARED WITH lOO POUNDS OF 

GOOD HAY. 
(according to HASWELL.) 



Clover, green 400 

Corn, green 275 

Wheat straw. 374 

Rye straw 442 

Oat straw 195 

Cornstalks 400 



Carrots- 69 

Barley 54 

Oats 57 

Corn... 59 

Linseed Cake 69 

Wheat bran 105 

119 



Barley and Rye. mixed. . .179 

Unseed 59 

Potatoes 175 

Rye 54 

Turnips 504 

Wheat 46 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

As may he seen by the foregoing table that we have 
got along so far in science as to separate and determine 
the constituent elements, or different acting substances 
of most materials to suit ourselves and to find a name for 
each, but when that is done, if we attempt to penetrate 
further or enter the real mystery, we realize after a time 
that we aimlessly wander in a dreadfully chaotic, limit- 
less space, where the imagination becomes so bewildered 
that we heave a sigh of r*elief on its return to the visi- 
ble, palpable realities of nature. So it remains without 
the pale of reason to suppose that any chemist, or num- 
ber of chemists, much less a presumptive, egoistic, com- 
paratively ignorant ass, can logically assert that he or 
they can, with the most reasonably remote degree of ac- 
curacy, appraise or set the intrinsic value, even only ap- 
proximately, of a piece of any material, whether it be 
a piece of gold, garlic, gammon or gall. 

As the intrinsic value of anything to man can only 
be guessed at, or comparatively measured by the specific 
actual benefits derived from them, which tend directly 
to preserve the individual in normal health and exist- 
ence, we can only class all such and relatively in accord- 
ance with their known qualities or properties that ren- 
der their utility not only desirable, but imperative, for 
the consummation of the .desired, healthy, progressive 
propagation of the race. 

The intrinsic value of gold has not increased, but its 
measuring or purchasing pov/er has, on account of the 
vastly unequal or inadequate increase of its volume, when 
compared to the increase of the volume of business or 
commodities, all of which the gold is the supposed ap- 
praiser, calculating reckoner or nominal measure of. The 
intrinsic values of wheat and cotton have not decreased, 
but their money purchasing or measuring powers have, 
on account of the relatively larger production of all com- 
modities sought by man, only for their intrinsic values, 
or increase, than that of the proportional increase of the 
volume of money, which money is compelled to measure 
the increased volume of productions, the same as when 
all business was smaller or less, or giving the money 
more duty to perform, or advancing or increasing its pur- 

120 






PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

chasing power, or adding to its labor or duty, as it were, 
without giving it a fairly requisite help or assistance to 
perform that duty, by adding to its numbers or in- 
creasing its volume. 

Then, a glance at the following statistical statement, 
given by Congressman Baker on the floor of the House, 
will satisfy the most skeptical that there are other influ- 
ences at work, instead of the ghostly flight of intrinsic quali- 
ties or value, destroying the current commercial value or 
ruling price of all American commodities. In 1866 we 
bad nearly $50 per capita ; now we have nominally $24, of 
which the banks own about two-thirds and the other third 
locked in the Treasury. May we now repeat? Repeal the 
funding act of 1870, and pay that accursed debt in the 
same kind of money that was paid for the bonds, and also 
your '*credit strengthening act," for it must have worked 
to the reverse of its title, for it is evident that our debt- 
paying power has decreased 100 per cent, since its pas- 
sage, and repeal that act of 1873, demonetizing silver; 
open your mints and thereby establish an incentive for 
the increase of the production of silver, as well as all 
other legitimate, active industries, which the free coinage 
of silver will yield, in company of an increase of paper 
money, as we can only increase our gold by purchasing 
abroad less than we sell, and by its natural production 
from our own mines, which costs us over $30 per ounce. 

Congressman Baker's statistical table, offered from the 
floor of the House of Representatives, Washington, D. C. : 

WHAT MAKES US POOR. 

"According to the report of the Secretary of Treasury, 
the national debt in 

1866 was $2,783,000,000 

We have paid on that debt : 

Principal $1,756,000,000 

Interest 2,538,000,000 

Premiums " 58,000,000 

Total $4,262,000,000 

We owe yet in 1893 1,027,450,000 

121 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

Measured in wheat, the whole debt in 1866 called for 
1,007,000,000 bushels. 

We have paid on it: Bushels. 

Principal 1,986,000,000 

Interest 2,974,000,000 

Premiums 62,000,000 

Total 5,022,000,000 

And what we still owe in 1893 calls for. . . 2,054,900,000 
or more than twice as much as would have paid the original 
debt. 

Measured in cotton, the entire debt in 1866 called for 
14,184,000 bales. 

We have paid on it : 

Principal . 34,800,000 

Interest 58,760,000 

Premiums 1,130,000 

Total . .. 94,690,000 

Amount due in 1893, about 34,000,000 

or nearly two and a half times as much cotton as would 
have paid the whole debt in 1866. 

England's shrewdness. . 

"Now, it must be borne in mind that the chief staples 
with which we discharge our obligations to England are 
wheat, cotton and silver. Wheat she must have, to feed 
her millions of toilers; cotton she needs as raw mate- 
rial for her mills ; silver she uses in her trade with China 
and the East. It is money in her pocket to get our wheat, 
cotton and silver cheap — the cheaper the better, and as 
long ago as 1862 the British financiers had found out that 
the American people did not know the A, B, C of finance, 
and for thirty years they have played us for suckers and 
dictated our financial legislation. The figures given 
above indicate the result." — Baker, M. C. 

By the above figures, which may be considered as rea- 

122 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

sonably correct, it may be readily seen that the pretended 
intrinsic value of the usurers has nothing whatever to 
do with the measuring power of money, nor with the 
measuring power of any commodities solely sought for 
their intrinsic or life-yielding or sustaining values, and 
that those both, values or nominal current measures, vir- 
tually exist or are determined merely by the law that 
gives money all its value and gives it and what it meas- 
ures a higher or lower value of measure or nominal stand- 
ing to each, respectively, according to the regulation of 
the volume of absolute money by that law, so to advance 
prices, we must increase our money. 

It is well known that there is another way by which 
we might increase our gold. But in order to do so we 
would be compelled, in a measure, to imitate the Papal 
or anti-Papal apes or asses (we suppose that that is what 
A. P. A. stands for), who borrow their ideas and methods 
from envious, jealous, spiteful, grudging foreigners, 
whose bigotry, ignorance and intolerance is invoked in 
order to keep the ignorant or misguided laboring ele- 
ment separated, so that piratical parasites or parties, or 
scurrilously machinating politicians, either of whose past 
actions unfit them for honorable recognition and are 
forced to stoop to such degrading and loathsome policy 
or depths that they once again, by straddling such a ridic- 
ulous, rakish, reckless, recreant billygoat, may ride into 
place and power, where they can almost legally reave 
from the deluded industrious nine-tenths of the fruits of 
his toil. So in like manner we might borrow the finan- 
cial policy or system and the gold and thus perpetuate 
the equality and liberty desecrating and destroying sys- 
tem of the cowering, cringing, ragpicking, epidemically 
inoculating, leprous Jews of Europe. 

In this connection, with the intrinsic value of money, 
we will offer the following quotations for the stultifica- 
tion of the Stygian single-standard disciples of, and par- 
ticularly for the confounding confusion of, that Ameri- 
can Pope of the Shermanation Army, the eminently noto- 
rious John himself, and as it is taken from an English 
authority, and concerning the legal tender quality of 
money given by law, we think he cannot rave nor cave 

123 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

around very much ; but if he does, we will give him the 
cold bath by the very simple process of telling him that 
it is from a man whom the Bank of England practically 
put, in their estimation, at the head of all the financiers 
of our generation, and that the author is a man whose 
memory is as execrable to the American mind as your 
conduct was, on making his acquaintance, when he gave 
you that valuable assistance for your bill for the demone- 
tization of silver, in secret, or under an ambiguous title 
and action, and that he is no less a person than your late 
lamented chum or crafty crony and dictating counsel, 
Ernest Seyd. (Do not faint now ! This is not his ghost ; 
neither a haunt from memory, nor a spirit of the damned, 
but only a quotation from a book.) 

Now, my dear sir, compose yourself and look over 
Mr. Ernest Seyd's book, on pages 618-19-20-21, of "Bull- 
ion and Foreign Exchange," and you will find all of the 
following, and some more, too: 

''Up to 1816 silver had been the true standard of value 
in England ; at that time the relation which the British 
silver coin bore to the gold was as fifteen and one-fourth 
to one. * * hj j^ -^ag 2,t that time in contemplation to 
reorganize the system of the British currency. The first 
step which the government resolved upon was to devise 
efficient measures to put a stop to the exportation of sil- 
ver; this object was most effectively achieved by reduc- 
ing the value of silver coins, as compared with gold, the 
proportion being fixed at fourteen and one-half to one, 
while the rest of the world kept it, as they do to the pres- 
ent day (1868), at fifteen and one-half or sixteen to one. 

"This was the first movement in favor of the single 
gold valuation. It was, as we have just shown, entirely 
practical, being based on no theory, for the very simple 
reason that no theory on the subject existed at that time. 

"The mint issues coin at 66 pence per ounce standard, 
while bar silver sells in the open market at 62^^ to 62^ 
pence per ounce standard. The artificial excess of value 
thus given to silver coin in England is upheld simply by 
the operation of the law of legal tender. Now, how far 

124 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

does this law of legal tender extend? We find as the 
case stands at present that it supplies 6 2-5 per cent, of 
the nominal value of the British silver coinage, making 
93 3-5 parts of silver pass for 100 parts full. Could not 
this law be made to go further in its value-creating and 
supplementing action? Might it not supply 25 or 50 or 
even 75 or 95 per cent, of the nominal value of the coin- 
age, leaving only 75, 50, 25 or even 5 per cent, of actual 
metallic value in the pieces of our currency? Have we 
not, indeed, in our copper coinage proof positive that the 
operation of the law of legal tender is sufficiently power- 
ful to supply at least 75 per cent, of the nominal value 
of the pieces, leaving only 25 per cent, intrinsic metallic 
value? Nay, why should we not dispense altogether with 
the silver coinage and substitute a non-metallic paper in- 
stead, as is actually done in certain countries where they 
have a forced paper currency?" 

Mr. Seyd was doubtful whether a paper currency with 
nothing but the law to sustain it would then, 1868, be a 
success in England. But, if memory does not fail you, 
you can remember that it was but four or five short years 
before his trip to Washington to purchase American per- 
fidy, and then there was that colossean monster, the Bank 
of England, towering in his rear. No wonder he doubted 
its success^in England ! But he never doubted the power 
of the law regarding the legal tender force or power 
of money; but it is reasonable to presume that he feared 
that displeasure and frown of those who could and would 
shorten his natural days on earth by all sorts of persecu- 
tion known to the unscrupulous usurer. 

But (on page 657) he again breaks out from the shadow 
of the monster into the open light of day and says : "As 
differences in value declare themselves, the law of legal 
tender, as we have shown before, is strong enough to 
cope with them, to a certain extent. No difference has as 
yet appeared exceeding the one-tenth part of the proved 
power of this law." Now, considering all the unfavor- 
able conditions under which Mr. Seyd wrote, would it 
not be proper to admit that the advocates of paper money 
should contend for the issuance of paper money, or Treas- 
ury notes, and that such money should be counted and 

125 ^ 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

have the debt-paying power of ten per cent, premium, or 
over that of the 23.2 grains of gold, which stands for the 
relative European standard of our gold dollar ? In that way 
we would not demonetize gold, but still hold it at the 
European quotation, but $1.00 of paper would cancel 
$1.10 of gold debts in the United States, but not in Eu- 
rope — no, indeed, it should not be wondered at if they 
demanded the demonetization of all metal tokens, when 
we find such a hero of usurers admitting that paper 
should be substituted for all metallic tokens, for well he 
knew that, were it not for absolute paper money in this 
very century, England to-day would be now a province 
of France, and all the world the better for it. 



126 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 



PART IV. 



CIRCULATION PER CAPITA. 

No harmonious regulation. — Economists agree to disagree. — Off on 
Panics. — Mr. Jevons the economist. — Life is too short. — Wild goose 
chase. — It will ever be thus. — Where is the money gone? — If we had 
issued paper. — Why, mamma. — Our debts. — To arrive at a safe 
monetary system. — Should we have gold as money? — Silver? — Paper? 
— No old world system in ours. — Stocks of money in the principal 
countries of the world. — Money of France. — Our reasonable, rela- 
tive circulating medium. — Our debt in 1880 and in 1892. — Who large 
circulation would injure. — Vive La. Belle France. — Money loaner's 
methods. — Gentle shudder at impinging paragraphs. — Anarchist. — 
Banking methods financial system by comparison with other coun- 
tries. — France. — Netherlands-. — England. — Accursed credit system. — 
Money must be regulated by internal commerce. — Facts entitling U. 
S. to large circulating medium. — Poor money. — England. — Mighty 
Mulhall. — Our $80,000,000,000 valuation. — Our relative circulation me- 
dium by Bradstreet's figures — $220 per capita one-seventh of our real 
wealth. — Glance at European district wealth. — England. — Germany. — 
France. — Austria-Hungary. — Italy. — Colorado. — Mexico. — Neth- 
erlands. — Missouri. — So will it ever be. — Sound the national tocsin. — 
Kid glove advertiser. — Other monetary system. — Honest money 
axiom. 

There is no fixity or settled regulation, nor concerted 
attempt on the part of any school of economy nor govern- 
ment, to arrive at any explicit understanding as to what 
should, or should not, constitute a mutably and mutually 
equitable and commensurate amount for the per capita 
circulation of all or one nation, or of the individuals 
composing the nation. It seems that the very idea of 
such an undertaking chills the latter and congeals the 
former into an extrinsic mortgagor and the latter to an 
intrinsic mortgagee. Since the dawn of reason, as it 
seems, that man in this regard has followed his innate 
attribute or instinct of avarice, and simply concluded to 
let every dog wag his own tail. 

All renowned economists never agreed with each other 
as to the measures that they would advise society to 
adopt in order to maintain an equitable, eurythmic 
amount or volume in circulation, duly in accordance to 

127 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

the amount or volume of business to be transacted with 
it. But they all agree on the one point — that is, when 
money has too much work to do or is scarce, it will rise 
in purchasing power or measuring price accordingly, 
leaving us thus to draw our own conclusions, but not 
suggesting the specific manner in which we should pro- 
ceed so as to keep its price from rising above a given 
mark, or the price of commodities from falling below a 
given mark, as, for instance, $4 shall not exceed in pur- 
chasing power or price one man's day's labor, or that 23.2 
grains gold, or $1, shall not exceed in purchasing power 
one bushel of wheat within this jurisdiction. But, unfor- 
tunately, they virtually leave the regulation of the vol- 
ume, and such a course as is to be pursued, to the sug- 
gestions of those who have heaps of money to loan or 
for rent in sufficient quantities so that they can paralyze 
all business and create widespread distrust and conster- 
nation, if the}^ wish to den}^ it to, or withdraw it from, 
circulation, which they will do in order to further their 
designs, or will do whenever their fresh demands are not 
acceded to. 

Neither have they proposed a successful method or 
course to be pursued in order to prevent those periodical, 
convulsive, monetary disturbances, which are accom- 
panied by such disastrous, moral and mental, physical 
and material ruin, and which render the great majority, 
previously enjoying all the necessary comforts of life, 
into a pandemically panivorous people, which desolating 
disturbances by those suffering people is pitiably phrased 
a panic. The causes ascribed, which are said to be the 
direct agencies which result in a panic-scarcity of money 
and a panic-stricken people, are as widely different and 
extrinsic as they are illogical, inconsistent and erroneous, 
particularly so when applied to the societary conditions 
of this age of enlightenment and enormous commercial 
transactions, for, whenever the accused cause has been 
remedied, such remedy has never been proven efficacious, 
even in assuaging the evils wrought by the next certain 
panic of money. . 

Some economists of what is loosely termed enviable 
reputation seem to become so confused in the logically 

128 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

interminable chaotic labyrinths of the incongruent dis- 
solving conclusions that are the natural concomitants of 
that purblind, ancient and barbarian-devised system of 
economy, that they consider themselves so strangely hyp- 
notized by ancient spooks that they forthwith, by the 
powers thus granted them, majestically decree a magical 
cycle of time for his Lordship the Panic to appear and 
annoy the sons of men in the flesh, the term of years 
being only limited from ten years upwards, according to 
the spook residing across the river. It would be a waste 
of time to give their numerous philosophisms for deter- 
mining the measure of the cycle. 

But one distinguished gentleman and writer, Mr. 
Jevons, an observer of forces, and one who allows him- 
self at times to indulge in original thought, ascribes the 
periodicity of panics to the amount of heat given out 
by the sun, or, more correctly, that amount received by 
the earth annually, great heat yielding abundant crops, 
while less heat would yield poor crops, and consequent 
scarcity of natural productions and consequent distress. 

Such reasonings are worthy of some consideration, but 
as the causes have a direct opposite bearing on society^ 
as they render a famine of food instead of money, the 
price of food is raised and money lowered; thereby in- 
dustry becomes stimulated and employment more easily 
procured; hence such conditions cannot bear any logical 
comparison with a scarcity of money. But they were 
at one time in the world's history to be regarded as of 
more import than they could be now as truly or justly 
considered. 

When the centre of wealth, learning and population 
was confined to a very limited area, as when the Greek 
or Roman civilization flourished, such causes as drouth 
or frost had a great deal to do with bringing on famine 
or food-panic, hunger or destitution to certain localities, 
or geographical districts, as before the age of steam and 
electricity the chief legal tender of the general public 
was commodity for commodity in exchange only, thus 
manifoldly adding to the distress through chiefly human 
locomotive distribution. Such abnormal heat, or want 
of it, in larger districts than those ever thus affected then, 

129 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

that we have reliable account of, could not now result in 
similar cumulative hardships, for the many reasons so 
well known that it is unnecessary to explain. 

Several economic writers, in chasing their phantom of 
a panic, think that they have bottled it in the improvi- 
dence of the laborer, when he receives about one-fourth 
of his just dues, or what is nowadays called good wages, 
because he sometimes asks for more and don't work hard 
enough when he is at it, and don't lay up his wages, as 
he should. The transparent falsity of such reasonings 
would be laughable if the subject was not so serious. 

Panics, as we know them, arise only from an insufficient 
supply of money in circulation or a forestalled or threat- 
ened insufficiency. A food famine and a money panic or 
panic of money are as diametrically opposite as is the 
forces of their causes. The one is produced by the secret 
work of nature; the other by the known artifice of man. 
No matter how little or how much the laborer has 
worked for what he received, for it is plainly evident that 
he has worked too much for the support of idlers, 3^et we 
have had no lack of productions in any respect nor food 
famine since the foundation of our Republic, but we have 
always -been able, when we so desire, to count on an in- 
creasing annual production, and have done more than 
our share in feeding the balance of the world — some for 
charity, but most for a miserably reluctant pay. 

As to laying up his wages, why, the more he spends 
the more he assists in stimulating all industry, and there- 
by rendering it the more easy of procuring employment. 

Again, suppose 10,000,000 laborers out of our 70,000,000 
entertained the righteous fear they should, of those im- 
mense gambling dens of hell, the banks, and that they 
had concluded to put away $20 per month for six months? 
Where would our fledgling or flippant financiers find 
flossy clearing house certificates to pay them? And 
what a crash! Two hundred dollars per capita would 
be required to stave off the otherwise dire disaster cer- 
tain to ensue. 

No ! No ! He is the wisest economic philosopher who 
circulates his money as he receives it, with due regard 
for the best and most for his part — accredited — measures 

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PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

of wealth or money. For he it is who can rightfully 
appreciate that at best life is too short for him to en- 
deavor to enjoy, or, rather, adoringly possess, more than 
his just share of an imaginary legal agent that contami- 
nates and blasts the soul. He it is who is just, and who ' 
can patriotically appreciate society's intention in its crea- 
tion of a circulating medium. He it is who can justly 
appreciate moral and intellectual worth and honest wealth 
above surreptitious subterfuge and ill-gotten gain. 

Others, again, attribute it to the very thing they loudly 
hope to see again — that is, to a lively circulation. They 
all advise that, in order to counteract the evil effects of a 
panic of money, money be taken from storage and be again 
circulated; or, in other words, put more money in actual 
circulation, and for that purpose all join in preaching con- 
fidence — that is, confidence in bank gambling — but never 
allude to that confidence which is the only figurative ele- 
ment of feoff in the law of any legal tender. 

While they all acknowledge that, no matter how freely 
it circulates, the purchasing power of money will increase 
and the purchasing power of all other commodities will 
decrease, if the volume of money is not increased in due 
proportion with the increase of natural and artificial pro- 
ductions, which, of course, must be self-evident, even to 
the most stupid, or else scarce-money advocates would 
not acknowledge the corn, even though it fired the flesh. 
So we see ; and who can help seeing, when those rapidly 
rotating advocates of our present whirlwind monetary 
system reluctantly admit the same : that the free or undue 
circulation of the amount in circulation is as innocent of 
the charge of pitiless panic pitching as the inadequate 
supply in circulation is guilty, although the latter's advo- 
cates shuffle and dodge the panic ball. 

Others of the swiftly revolving advocates of honest 
money ascribe it to foreign commerce. But such a claim 
is contrary to the facts, for if a nation has a surplus of 
productions and desires to sell it abroad, the money re- 
ceived will tend to leave all its money the more easy to 
obtain. If a nation needs to import excessively, it should 
and can know it previously and be prepared for such an 
emergency and issue more national legal tender, in order 

131 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

to the more stimulate all industry, in the hope of produc- 
ing more exchangeable commodities to offset the abnor- 
mal importation, which issue also would maintain firm, 
if not advanced, prices on any exportable commodities, 
and therefore have a tendency to retain more of the for- 
eign, interchangeable bullion and prevent its leaving in 
such quantities as it otherwise would do. As, for in- 
stance, if we had $20 more per capita in Treasury notes 
or silver, our wheat would be selling for at least $1.25 per 
bushel and cotton for sixteen cents a pound. And sup- 
pose that either form of money was at 10 or 20 per cent, 
discount, for which, if it was full legal tender, there could 
be no earthly or financial reason found, still at 20 per 
cent, discount our wheat would be $1.04 per bushel and 
our cotton 12 4-5 cents per pound. 

Others of the cyclic, or cyclonic-celerity advocates of 
the infamous, infinitive, interest system ascribe it to the 
workings of an import duty. But this import duty only 
tends, as intended, to maintain as near as possible a 
presaged current price on the commodities thus protect- 
ed, simply placing it as an integrant part of all current 
prices, which current prices must alone be the proper 
guide for the nation's financiers in determining the 
nation's fixed wealth and annual productions, for which 
to provide a duly proportioned circulating medium. So 
it is both ferine and fusty to plead ignorance on this 
score, or that import duty is the unconscious aggressor, 
who ignominiously invited that scoundrelly Prince Panic. 

The only writers on the subject who seem by their 
perspective to touch, in part, the real cause, may be said 
to be those who ascribe money panics to the machina- 
tions of plutocracy and a venal press, ever ready to praise 
public vice and condemn public virtue for any tangible 
reward. But why should we follow on that wild goose 
chase and fruitlessly wander through that barren, limit- 
less space traversed by self-confessed, erroneous imagina- 
tion, seeking to gather some theorem from theories as 
transparently exploded or as confused, confuted and con- 
generic as that deluded imagination itself? 

It will ever be thus while misguided, though possibly 
well-intentioned, philanthropists deliriously seek some al- 

132 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

chemical process for paying a previously contracted debt 
of $ioo worth with $io in money, or to pay for $ioo 
worth, according to prescriptive valuation, or wholesome 
fruit with a poisonous or cankerous $io I. O. U. or promise- 
to-pay national bank note. Is it not the present and the past 
monetary system of the world that allows ubiquitous usurers 
to exist, and even allows them to regulate its volume, so that 
its inadequate supply for the volume of business, ever 
increasing, is the logical cause of usurers' money panics? 
Is it not this system that has made the combined world's 
national debt of $28,000,000,000 of gold — eight times 
more than the whole coined gold of the world, or four 
times more than all the metallic money tokens of the world, 
both gold and silver, with at least twice as much more of 
private debts? Still all debts are increasing. How are they 
going to be paid? Just wipe them ofif the slate and com- 
mence anew, and we will all start out even, and see if 
we cannot be as frothy fools as before, if only for frolic. 
How does that strike you? 

Is it not the present system that made possible our 
national debt, railroad debt and municipal debt amount 
to-day to the enormous amount of $8,000,000,000, or 
nearly five times all our total money in circulation, even 
nickels, copper cents and bank promises to pay, with 
more than twice that amount of state, county, farm mort- 
gages and private, individual debts, for where is the saint 
among us that is not in debt to some other sinner? And 
all still increasing. On all of which at least there is an 
annual interest of $2,500,000,000, or $36 per capita; we 
must pay to the usurer yearly, with a so-called $24 to 
pay it, to be paid in cash, of which very little finds its 
way back to our circulation once it gets into the hands of 
the money renters, even though he is supported in idle- 
ness and luxury by labor's industry, because the major- 
ity live in Europe. 

We are the only first-class nation in the world, with 
the possible exception of France, that could pay such a 
debt in a century. For what reason under heaven have 
we incurred this delirium-yielding debt of $19,000,000,000, 
or twelve times more than our whole circulating medium? 
We are sometimes told that we borrowed it for the laud- 

133 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

able reason of improving our property, and that it was 
principally in European gold. Now if that immense sum 
was needed and borrowed, then why not issue a larger 
circulating medium? Where is it gone? Certainly not 
buried in the earth or melted into thin air. Now, this 
$19,000,000,000 is more than five times that of the coin 
gold of the world. Up to 1892 we produced $2,000,000,000 
of gold and over $1,146,000,000 silver. Our excess of ex- 
ports over imports only for the past twenty-five years 
amounts to over $2,000,000,000 besides, or a total of $4,000,- 
000,000 that we rightfully owned or borrowed, not counting 
over $1,000,000,000 of silver. Well, where is it gone to? 
What drove it out? I guess we have it yet, for the interest 
fiend has not stolen it. We have it, sure. But the polite, 
porthole Secretary of the Treasury informs us that there 
is only to be found in the United States, both buried and 
buncoed, $604,000,000, or about the one-seventh of what 
we ought to have ; the other six-sevenths is gone and 
going to pay interest on what we have left^ — the one- 
seventh. Is not that the condition that the present bar- 
barian, monetary system has done for you? 

Now, suppose that we had issued paper money in suffi- 
cient volume or quantities to supply the legitimate de- 
mands of the borrower or business man and decree it 
full legal tender, no producer or fighter, laborer or sol- 
dier would have ever murmured at it, but gladly receive 
it for their productions or services. And suppose, for 
the sake of controversy, that we admit that paper money 
would have driven out all the gold from this country, 
which is the insupportable, wilfully lying assertion of the 
goldites or money renters. No one, even now, asserts or 
believes but we would have progressed at least as well 
as what we have ; that our railroads would be built, fron- 
tiers dissolved, population increased, enlightenment dif- 
fused, etc., etc. 

Now, then, suppose that the $604,000,000 gold would 
have vanished ; that some fine morning we took it into our 
investigating brain to cremate all this paper money — 
with which we found no fault, but merely to satisfy some 
whim, say, to please some of its vociferously decrying 
Cousin Jacks? Well! What condition would we find 

134 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

ourselves in then? Simply over $22,500,000,000 better 
off, or that much debt paid, or never existing over our 
heads. But, indeed, we must say that "it was rather costly, 
this $22,000,000,000 worth of educational experience, for 
the payment of which it would require one year's total 
production and increase, while our entire population 
would find themselves compelled to fast, pray and work 
with the constancy of old Harry during the full pre- 
scribed term, and all for the laudable reason of uphold- 
ing Satan's honest dollar. 

Where has it gone? Gone into the stomachs and the 
safes and the pockets of the profligate and lewd drift- 
wood of so-called European civilization. AVe are told 
that it is perfectly legitimate and proper to borrow some 
$19,000,000,000 to use as a circulating medium, but only 
when a foreigner loans or issues it. But if our own gov- 
ernment loaned and issued us the one-third of that 
amount, why, mama! what a cawing pandemonium of 
pampered parasites we would have ! Some of the most 
vociferous interjections might be translated thus: Hon- 
est Dollar! World's Markets! Depreciated Money! 
Unwholesome Speculation ! etc. 

According to the last census, partly published, it gives 
the funded debts of railroads for 1880 as $2,390,000,000; 
for 1892 as $5,463,000,000, or an increase of 129 per cent. 
Loans and discounts of banks, except private banks, 
which are not given, for 1880, $1,372,000,000; for 1892, 
$3,360,000,000, or an increase of 145 per cent., or $50 per 
capita, loaned, into active circulation, while the mono- 
metallists say that $9 in gold is all-sufficient, yet we are 
supposed to have $24.34 per capita of our own, and still 
we are compelled to borrow $50 more per capita from 
the banks, and then be cursed with a banker's panic, that 
ragamuffin urchin of the usurer. 

Real estate mortgages for 1880 were $2,500,000,000; 
the total of eighteen states give, for 1892, $4,547,000,000, 
the aggregate of them all being estimated at $6,300,000,- 
000, or an increase of 152 per cent., or more than $94 
per capita. The total net private indebtedness, only that 
what is on record, of the whole American people being 
in 1880 but $6,750,000,000, but, notwithstanding all our 

135 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

wealth, resources and debt-paying abilities, we find that, 
in September, 1892, it had increased 192 per cent., or over 
15 per cent, per year, and amounted to the hair-raising 
sum of $19,700,000,000, or $3,000,000,000 more than all 
the gold and silver money, plate, jewelry, toothpicks and 
buttonhooks combined in this whole, land and water, 
world. This prodigious debt amounts to $294.00 per capita, 
to pay which, we have all told $24,34, as well as to en- 
deavor to pay our way as we go, but of this $24.34 the 
banks own almost two-thirds, and the other one-third, 
like the noctivigant, burglarious rodent, evilly sleeping 
its days in the Treasury, under the robbing, ogre-like, 
secure surveillance of the funding act of 1870. Again we 
say: Repeal the insane, dastardly, cowardly act, devised 
by Satan's shrewdest imp ! 

The question that now agitates the weak but thought- 
ful mind is. What will we do with this $294 per capita 
debt, which is but part of what we owe? The conclusion 
they generally arrive at, on being completely fatigued by 
innumerable, chimerical, haphazard, puzzling guesses is, 
Well, let us cross it out, call it square, and make a fresh 
start ! When you ask the single gold standard advocates 
what excuse they have to offer in palliation for the per- 
fidy of our last thirty-year misnamed statesmen, they in- 
differently shrug their shoulders and, with astonishing 
ignorance, train-hold-up nonchalance and insolent cool- 
ness, remark : Well, it isn't as bad as we thought. There 
are the farmers ; their farms are only mortgaged for some- 
thing like $2,000,000,000, or $30 of a total per capita. 
Why, a good crop of hay (which is a most brazen lie) 
would pay their debts. Well, what will they live on 
while raising the hay? Oh, damn it! Let them eat hay! 
Isn't that good enough for them? Indeed, it will be too 
good for them, if they continue to vote for the perpetu- 
ation of such an infernal, robbing system. 

We pay from 4 per cent., the lowest on United States 
public debt bonds, up to 36 per cent., and all the poor 
and very needy as high as 60 per cent, per annum for 
the use of money for circulation, and annually have to 
raise from that circulation at least $35 per capita for in- 

136 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

terest on old debts. So that the most obtuse cannot 
fail to see that there is not the one-tenth enough of money 
in actual circulation, and that now, in this stage of the 
game, it is imperatively necessary to keep on borrowing 
all we can, at any rate of interest, for the year of gen- 
eral repudiation is fast approaching, if the present mone- 
tary system is continued; but we must borrow now if 
we desire to move at all or not to bring all industries to 
a standstill for a want of sufficient circulating money. 
If we do not now keep on increasing our debts by bor- 
rowing we will thereby not only receive another object lesson 
in monetary science from a money panic or scarcity, but 
we will precipitate that indescribable, inconceivable, deso- 
lating war of the "survival of the fittest." 

When we see such commodities that are absolutely 
essential to our very existence fall in price or purchas- 
ing power, but not in intrinsic value, such as food, rai- 
ment, iron, wood, brick, etc., then we know that there is an 
insufficient, incompatible amount or supply of that mor- 
dant but mute appraiser of all other commodities, 
money, in circulation ; for, if $i measured one bushel of 
wheat, when we produced 200,000,000 bushels, if that dol- 
lar was not doubled numerically when we doubled the 
production of our wheat, that dollar would inevitably be 
compelled, sooner or later, to measure figuratively, as be- 
fore, the now two bushels. So there is but the alterna- 
tive — either double the dollar in number or you double 
its purchasing power ; or leave wheat at its $1 price con- 
stant by law, or sell your wheat at fifty cents ; or otherwise 
shut up and say no more about it! Now think over the. 
matter and please let us know which are you going to do, 
for we intend soon either to. raise wheat or raise Cain. 

In order to arrive at and adopt a safe and scientific 
monetary system, which will obviate the recurrence of 
a panic scarcity of money, and inordinate fluctuations 
in the current prices of all commodities, money included, 
we must not confine ourselves to that system adopted 
since the establishment of the Bank of Venice, which 
for centuries has bestowed nothing on the Old World 
but discord, bloodshed, robbery, rapine and dissolution 

137 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

to nations, hunger and serfdom to the miserable millions^ 
and debauchery and Hbertinism to their maudlin masters. 

We should not, and must not, sink to that shameful 
depth of depravity by forcing ourselves to untruthfully 
confess that, after a century of Republican blessings of 
light, that we are blindly and ignorantly compelled to 
follow the teachings and dictation of those we long since 
conquered and condemned, and whose ideas long since 
to the world confuted as being incompatible with those 
held' by us in regard to the social structure of society, 
as to how it should be constituted in regard to its finan- 
cial system, as well as its other equally all-important sys- 
tems. 

Have we not felt in this generation, and proved to an 
astonished, doubtful, but admiring world, our power to 
inaugurate and maintain a paper era of nearly two dec- 
ades (and would forever, but for the treachery of men 
that are known and will be cursed while the earth spins 
in space), which years in our history we may point to 
with just pride as their giant strides of progressive, mag- 
nificent achievements pale into an insignificant shadow 
anything before attempted in the traditional or written 
history, of the golden globe. 

Why should we needlessly imitate the methods of Pat- 
erson, the Pirate when the token of this system was but 
paper, but in its imprinted mace was concentrated all the 
intrinsic value that on earth we realize and in the beyond we 
believe and hope for, faith, patriotism and enlightenment, 
besides all our worldly possessions? Down with him who 
asks for more! The sooner that his gold is gathered and 
securely packed, and he and it is with conventionality, but 
constrainingly, consigned to a first-class cabin berth aboard 
some mudscow adrift on the bosom of a cloudburst freshet 
of the madly moving waters of the muddy Missouri, in the 
hope of giving him a good start from the mighty momentum 
when he strikes the salt, the better it will be for all con- 
cerned. 

W^e lived without even seeing his coin for more than 
half a generation and we and our posterity can do the 
same until the earth shall be no more for ever. W^hen 

138 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

involved in the torturing throes of a deplorable, internal, 
internecine war, they gambled with their gold in the blood 
of Americans, while the paper, reddened with that blood 
and succored by the golden, winning wheat of the warm, 
whispering West, brought to us that greatest of all vic- 
tories, again, brighter than before, peace. During this 
time paper money proved that it was all that was needed 
as money, not only in peace, but when beset by open 
enemies within and secret ones without. But as a peace 
money it had proved itself twenty times before 1862 in 
this our own country, by as many different issues which 
money was receivable for, revenues to government, and 
always preferable to, and more eagerly sought, than gold. 
To go back further. Was it not paper money that pre- 
vented Napoleon from making an early breakfast or a 
late supper of England? Or shall we go back still fur- 
ther? Was it not paper money that checked the rapid 
decline of the Roman Empire, after the battle of Cannae? 
Was it not absolute paper money that paid the vast 
legions of soldiers that won the battles of Mataurus and 
Zama and that drove the invader from Italy? But why 
go further or say more, when there are none but a soph- 
ist or selfish sycophant to attempt contradiction? 

In order to provide a monetary panic-proof system, it 
is not necessary to be confined to any one or two mate- 
rials from which monetary tokens may be made and 
stamped with the imperative mace of society. Should 
we, you ask, have gold as an absolute national inter- 
changeable money? The answer is, Yes, for two reasons : 
First, because we now carry on our commerce with other 
nations who recognize it as a measure of value ; second, 
for the more logical and patriotic reason that it is an 
American staple production at present, as we produce 
now nearly one-third of the world's production. While 
we know that it possesses very little intrinsic value, being 
about the same as silver, of a little more than nickel and 
copper, but not near as much as iron. Yet, why not, 
when we find foreigners willing to exchange for it,^ on 
account of the commercial value given it by the use it is 
put to as money, but more especially the fictitious value 

139 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS \ 

I 
fixed by law, whatever we may fancy that they have for I 
sale, among which. you may enumerate everything con- i 
ceivable except justice, equality and liberty. 

Should we use silver as an absolute, national, inter- 
changeable money the same as gold? The answer is, 
Yes, for many reasons. First, since 1793 we have left our 
mints open to the free coinage of gold and have ever 
since assiduously applied ourselves to seek out all its se- 
cret, natural receptacles," and still find that, under the 
most favorable conditions, we never could amass of gold 
but a very small fraction of the necessary amount re- 
quired for a circulating medium for our vast and ever- 
increasing commerce. Up to 1873 we left our mints open 
for the free coinage of silver also, and since have pur- 
chased and have in the Treasury some $150,000,000 worth, 
and still we find that if the free coinage of silver is imme- 
diately resumed and its production thereby stimulated, 
that we cannot yet procure but a fraction of the amount 
that is necessary for a circulating medium, commensu- 
rate with the volume of our ever-increasing business, equal- 
ling an annual production of over $40,000,000,000, which 
must be exchanged several times during the year, and of 
itself measures or amounts to five times and more than all 
the gold and silver money of the whole world. 

Second, nearly two-thirds of the population of the 
world with whom we trade have silver as their standard, 
and eleven-twelfths of them use silver as a national legal 
tender money at a ratio of fifteen and one-half to one, 
except Japan, 16.18 to i, and Mexico, sixteen and one- 
half to one; but there is India, with fifteen to one, and 
has nine times as much silver as Japan and Mexico to- 
gether. Third, because it is an American production, and 
our production of that metal is more than that of gold, 
as well as being the largest in the world, amounting to 
42 per cent, of the whole. Fourth, while we find people 
willing to trade us their wares or products for silver, it 
would be suicidal in us to try to depreciate it or dishonor 
it, merely to satisfy our enemies, without converting 
them to grace. 

140 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

WHY PAPER MONEY? 

It is not on account of its commodity price, which is 
now mostly regulated by the demand in the arts for it, 
and the hope, that will not down, that it will be restored 
to its former fiat prestige, for if it was discarded as money 
altogether it would not sell in the open market for more 
than twenty-five cents per pound; since its former prin- 
cipal use and demand for money token has been stealthily 
and dastardly cut off, by closing our mints to its free 
coinage; that scarce money advocates, who succeeded in 
their evil design of stopping its mintage, decry it. They 
do so only in the hope of keeping all legal tender money 
so scarce that they, with their inordinate proportion of it, 
can manipulate it so as to regulate its circulating vol- 
ume, and thereby gather any interest they see fit to col- 
lect or extort, and consequently regulate the price of all 
productions and their creator's wages, the laborer. 

Should we use paper as an absolute national inter- 
changeable money? The answer is, Yes, for many rea- 
sons, a few of which we will endeavor to feebly explain. 
Now, don't drop the book and run away ! First, aside from 
our own incontrovertible knowledge and imperishable 
experience, we find twenty of the other twenty-four principal 
nations of the earth — ^and if we exclude China, we find forty- 
seven out of every forty-eight of the inhabitants of the 
globe — using uncovered legal tender paper money, and 
nothing to back it but the debt, or faith of the people in 
their own integrity. 

Second, for the reason that, should we wish to have 
our ideas and our methods of a financial system when 
given expression to consonantly chime with the ideas and 
the methods that made possible the marvelous, progres- 
sive achievements of still our own age, which surround 
us with as persistent constancy as the atmosphere we 
breathe, in preference to those ideas and methods evolved, 
mayhap, in the sombrous, sinister seclusion of the clois- 
ter, or earlier in the backgammon, baffling brain of the 
Greek banc-er (banker), as he sat on his three-legged 
stool in the market place, hiring or renting out iron or 

141 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

silver money at usury or interest, forbidden in your Bible 
of then and now. Or have them chime with such ideas 
as those evolved and proven just and equitable in the age 
of land and water steam locomotion, in preference to 
those evolved in the age of the human pack-mule, as 
we find' the Coreans and the Ainus of to-day, the latter 
moving backwards, hauling or dragging his freight, using 
liis teeth as the patent car-coupler. 

Or chime with such ideas and methods evolved in the 
age of the spectroscope or improved telescope, enabling 
us to measure the length, breadth and depth of the canals 
on our sister planets, and vie with them in systems of 
irrigation. Versus the age of green-hide-shoulder-sack 
water-packing to their siccative shrubbery. Or chime 
with the ideas evolved in the age of that student of true 
chemistry, who, by his scientific and sublime courtship 
of the ever-fair Nature^ has beguiled her into the be- 
trayal of her previous hidden secrets by the unfolding of 
her loving affinities, whereby mountains of arduous toil 
have been evaded and dissolved. Versus the age of the 
dreamy, weird alchemist, fitfully endeavoring by chimeri- 
cal occultism, to subjugate the forces of nature, and 
magically convert lead into gold, with its natural conse- 
quent degradation of man, arising from the rhythmic fear 
and awe of uncanny gods. 

Or chime with such ideas evolved in the age of that 
mysteriously potent agent, that harbinger of future cli- 
matic changes, that light-speeding messenger of human 
intelligence and greeting; that silent, subtile, slagging, 
sidereal force, of inconceivable simile, with lightening, 
supernatant stoicism, speeding the smiling millions, to or 
from their daily toling task, in the decorated, veneer tap- 
estried, bi-hourly paper, daylit reading room of the trolley 
car. That force enabling the erudite guide, the farmer, 
in his noiselessly moving bastion, to merely turn a valve 
or press a button, without causing any interruption of 
his reading of, or speculations of, Darwin's Evolution, 
while glidingly pulverizing the temporarily recuperating 
soil, or garnering the golden-hued harvest, lavishly spread 
abroad by his superior, soulful, socialistic mother, nature. 

142 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

Versus the ideas evolved in the age of the periodical 
postman afoot, shod in straw-rope shoes. Or in the age 
of the slight warning given by the nearing, lowering, 
cowering, storm-laden cloud. Or the lord-freighted palan- 
quin, moving with snail-like gait on human wheels. Or 
the farmer guiding his crooked-stick plow, hitting the 
high places, or slightly disfiguring or scratching the torose 
pockmarks on his mother earth's face ; his draught power 
being furnished by his soul mate in the capacity and 
form of either sister, daughter, wife or mother ! 

Or have them chime with ideas evolved in the age that 
provides a truly scientific education to the millions who 
we only entice to attend. Or in which we find strewn 
promiscuously around divers luxuries in the temporary 
dugout of that frontiersman, humbly courageous, that 
were unknown, inconceivable and darkly denied to for- 
mer conquerors and kings. Versus those ideas of an 
age of a gloomy, sentimental education, of fretted legend- 
ary fables, rigidly reserved, as the special prerogative of 
those endowed with extra divine rights. 

Or have them chime with the ideas evolved in an age 
that has realized and enjoyed more development and 
progress of our own republican century than that of all 
previous centuries of the earth, ten times over combined, 
offering open opportunities for the enjoyment of perfect 
happiness, which may be had in commensurate quanti- 
ties, in accordance only to the amount of pure and noble 
thought and purpose possessed by those who seek. 
Versus those ideas of that of an age when the ignorantly 
indoctrinated ideologies of the idolatry of man and money 
yielded its logical concomitants of hunger, distress and 
crime, until was seen nations, languages, religions and 
races perish from the earth. 

If we wish a panic-preventing financial system we will 
not confine ourselves to the system of the Old World, 
which is as effete and growing obsolete, as its theories 
of divine right, their systems or system resulting in as 
different and incongruous a circulation per capita as are 
their languages and resources. We find England with 
the one-third of the population and the one-tenth of the 

143 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

natural resources of Russia, yet having more than twice 
as much gold, more money, and nearly three times as 
much per capita in circulation. So there must be some 
subtile influences at work other than a just and equitable 
monetary system. We see France, with the one-seven- 
teenth of our territory and only 39,000,000 inhabitants, 
having as much gold as the United States and Canada, 
Italy, Greece, Switzerland, Austria-Hungary and Spain, 
with a combined population of 165,000,000, or more than 
four times her population and more than forty times her 
resources or territor}^ We find France with about as 
much silver as China, with ten times her population ; 
and with $112,000,000 silver more than the United States, 
while we produce twenty times more silver than France 
— and we produce more than four-tenths of the world's 
production — yet she has nearly twice as much silver per 
capita in circulation as the United States. She has about 
two and one-fourth times as much money in circulation, 
or as a national stock, per capita as England has, which 
is composed of gold, silver and paper, and all being full 
legal tender and interchangeable ; hence her red-dog luck 
in stacking up the chips of gold. 

The credit system, or the evils of interest, are almost 
unknown, or rather unfelt, in France, except an interest 
paid on some $6,000,000,000 of national debt, which is 
scarcely felt by the people, simply because their whole 
system of success being, instead of the hand-to-mouth 
distress prevailing in other European nations, it is due 
to the large amount per capita always kept in circulation, 
and at times the prohibition of foreign, competing com- 
modities with that of her own production. 

The following statistical statement will be found use- 
ful to the practical student of monetary science, in its 
exhibition of the ridiculous discrepancies and divergen- 
cies of the system that the goldites, both foreign and 
native, through the bombastic offices of that American 
Pope of the Shermanation Army, wish to perpetuate on 
an overindulgent people. How long, O. Lord ! how long 
will this continue? 

144 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

In order to arrive at logical conclusions as to what 
relative amount would be a just, reasonable and equitable 
circulating medium or volume of measures and value, it 
may be advisable to take as a calculating basis some 
known or tried method of determining values, as well 
as the amount to be issued or entrusted to individuals, 
both singly and collectively. Although we hold that, 
with the proper safeguards, such as good and sufficient 
security, that wisdom would dictate that no more money 
could be forced into circulation by a government than 
that legitimately demanded by internal commerce, hon- 
estly and equitably transacted, with equal privileges for 
all, which would establish as permanent and nearly equal 
a valuation, in real property, as exists in Europe, based 
on a similar number of annual yields or incomes from 
such real property. Now, such assertion or proposition as 
the above defies successful contradiction; and those who 
believe, or pretend to, and would have us believe, that 
the cubic foot of air enclosed by rock and mortar, the 
thousand of brick, the shingles or the slate, the small lot, 
or the acre of ground, has not as much, and more, intrin- 
sic value in the United States than the same has in Eu- 
rope, v/e have no more use for him here. Let him pack 
his duds and slink by the next lumber-lugger leaving and 
bid farewell when passing Hell Gate. 

There certainly cannot be a very strenuous opposition 
ofifered to our theory by our goldite friends when we 
adopt the method to base our calculation on that they 
lovingly adore, namely, the methods and customs of all 
banks in general, by which we will endeavor to show 
that $100 per capita would not be sufficient, as a circu- 
lating medium for the United States, and that $200 per 
capita would be far more near the proper amount, while 
it would be perfectly safe to have more. 

The total amount of the national stock of money or 
legal tender is but $1,554,000,000, or $23.24 total per cap- 
ita, or gold $9, silver $8.08, paper $6.15. By the census 
of 1890 we find the average loan of banks, except pri- 
vate ones not reported, to be about $52 per capita, or 
$3,360,000,000. Their number in 1892 increased to 3,701^ 
with a combined capital of $680,000,000, their surplus 

145 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 



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PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 



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147 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

$237,000,000, making a total of $917,000,000, or nearly 
two-thirds of all our money in their possession or control, 
while the other third is securely locked in the Treasury. 
The total net earnings on this so-called capital of $680,- 
000,000 being given only as $66,500,000, or about 10 per 
cent. only. In 1890 we see that the banks issued at inter- 
est over five times their combined capital, which in 1890 
is given as $625,000,000, which shows that if no scarc- 
ity of money at all was felt, that if all our legal tender | 
was in active circulation, which under the present 
law is impossible, that even then,- by those figures alone, 
that it is not the one-third of the amount required, be- 
sides over $14 per capita of an annual increase of debt, 
and yet leaving the payment of $19,000,000,000 to shift for 
itself or let Bill Jones pay for it with honest money. 

In 1880 we find that the private indebtedness $6,750,- 
000,000; twelve years later, 1892, it had increased $13,- 
000,000,000, or a total of $19,750,000,000, or an average 
increase of $1,083,000,000 per annum, and none of the 
old debt paid. So it is evident that there was not one- 
fifth enough in 1880, even according to incomplete bank 
figures; and as we increase annually in real wealth at a 
less than European valuation, $15,000,000,000. So it 
must be plainly evident that, in a proportional relation, 
we have not in circulation the one-tenth part of that re- 
quired, which should exceed in measure, at least, the 
amount of the annual increase. It is also well known that 
loan agencies loan out as much or more money than banks, 
and that private individuals also loan an enormous 
amount at exorbitant rates, of which we have no reliable 
statistics. It is to the interest of banks to keep the 
amount of legal tender in circulation as small as possi- 
ble, in order that they may control its volume and rate 
of interest, and they unceasingly preach about the evils 
of too much currency. Who ever saw too much full 
legal tender currency in any nation possessing peace and 
permanency? The evils exist only in their imagination, 
or is rather the expression of their hopes that it w^on't 
be so, for it is beyond the power of mortal to prove by 
any methods of sound reasoning that there could be too 
much full legal tender money put in circulation, so that 

148 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

it could materially, or even morally, injure honest pur- 
pose or legitimate industry, or that any universally na- 
tional injury could arise from any large amount, even 
could it be put up to $500 per capita, all the loud-cawing 
gold standard parrots to the contrary notwithstanding. 
The only appreciable injury that could arise would be to 
the interest extorters, who never produce, but always 
consume, but which would benefit the great majority. 

But let us examine briefly the money loaners' methods 
and customs of issuing or loaning the people's currency. 
We see by the census that the farm mortgages average 
about one-third the value of the farms. Well, is not this 
very fact, known to all, enough to enrage the coolest 
patriotic American so that he chokes to death the first 
scarce or honest dollar money man that happens in his 
hearing to advocate the gold standard theory? The 
banker values the average $9,000 farm's owner a fit and 
proper person to issue $3,000 to. Well, then, why not 
issue to the 4,500,000 farmers $3,000 each, which would 
amount to over $200 per capita for our total? But it 
would not do for the United States Government to issue 
or loan it, simply because the usurer's vocation would 
vanish — no other earthly reason ! There is no farmer 
with 320 acres of land but could advantageously use 
$3,000 cash per annum, and at least double that amount in 
production of all kinds, at a fair, living price, enabling 
him to pay American wages, or near such a price as ob- 
tained in 1866-76. 

Then what about all the other industries, factories of 
all kinds, the mineral production alone, ever increasing, as 
1880, $369,000,000, to 1890, $668,000,000, and only aver- 
aging coal at $1.40 per ton of 150,000,000 tons, 8,250,000 
tons pig iron at only $15 per ton, or three-fourths cent per 
pound, all minerals, with similar average, and all being in 
what is commonly called the crude state? That indus- 
try alone would support a per capita of $200 for 3,340,000, 
or the twentieth of our population, or $10 per capita for 
all, and so on with all the other natural or legitimate in- 
dustries. From 1880 to 1890 we see the railroads in- 
creased their debts alone 129 per cent., and no one then 
found fault with the security. This alone shows an in- 

149 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

crease of debt of $4 per capita per annum; deeper still 
in debt year after year. It would seem to the disinter- 
ested that the usurers sought to precipitate anarchy, hav- 
ing grown tired of Republicanism. But, then, what need 
we care? The producer will have to pay it all, so let us 
set about raising his wages at once, if not sooner! Well, 
what an anomaly! Every natural and legitimate pro- 
duction ever increasing, whenever we so desire, and 
our debt-paying power decreasing to the enormous 
amount of $1,083,000,000 of recorded debt yearly. Won- 
der that our financial legislators in the quagmire of de- 
spair do not suicide by drowning in it! There is no sane 
man outside an asylum who could honestly or truthfully 
say that he believed we have more than one-tenth of the 
circulation our business demands. It is well knov/n and 
universally admitted, and never contradicted, that more 
than 95 per cent, of our business is done with I. O. U. 
paper, or, in other words, with conjuring, cursed credit, 
or individual money, which, of course, the banker says, is 
better than national full tender, this admission proving 
plainly that we need nineteen times more cash to meet 
our payments, as the French do, pay as they go, and 
in this connection for the nonce, Que nous dison ! Vive 
la belle France ! 

Every one is aware of the fact that any and all money 
lenders will lend all the money that they can muster on 
all property when they are legally secured against loss, 
at an average never exceeding or demanding more than 
three times the amount of the loan in the valuation of 
the property to be hypothecated, and if they owned ten 
times as much money as they do they would not hesitate 
to loan it all as long as they received the interest they 
desired. The Amercan railroads, starting of¥ in 1880 
with about $2,500,000,000 of a debt, found no difficulty 
of more than doubling that debt in ten years. Every one 
is aware that money is loaned, to a great amount, on 
security of twice the amount of the loan, and if the banker 
entertains the faith in the individual that he should enter- 
tain in the stability of the whole American people and 
their wealth, he will not hesitate to loan on a security of 
dollar for dollar. The banker is well aware that the less 

150 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

money in circulation, the more doubtful the security. He 
is never solicitous about what is to be done with the 
money thus emitted or loaned ; all he cares about is that 
he gets his interest and his principal back. Then, why 
is it that, if the usurer. is willing to loan us $20,000,000,- 
000, it would be wrong for us to issue $20,000,000,000 of 
legal tender, while the real wealth would remain the same 
and its intrinsic value undisturbed, although enhanced in 
price, and therefore the nominal security greater? Other- 
wise, where does he expect to get his $20,000,000,000 
from, or does he want to perpetuate a tribute from the 
race while the earth remains inhabitable? Even wise 
men are heard to assert their belief that such is the inten- 
tion. 

Ah ! then, indeed, well may the weak, the gentle and 
the timid, with the traitorous coward, shudder and con- 
sider as cruel and confounding, the loud rejoicings of the 
learned, unbiased, noble, good and true, at the nerve- 
shattering news of such impinging paragraphs as, packed 
piacular prisons; insane asylums overflowing; rampant, 
clearly cool, calculating crime ; spoliating, murder riots ; 
incendiary, social denunciations ; and the pop of the an- 
archist's firecracker. Then he (the learned, etc.) ex- 
claims redemption is near at hand ! He says that then 
he knows that our sacred rights of private property are 
robed in cowardice! Our laws, swimming in their chill- 
ing rottenness, are timid ! Our inapposite statesmen 
struck dumb, frail in faith, and our wisest men have be- 
come fearful ! For fear, decked in blazoning arms, is the 
harbinger of all social revolutions that never turn back- 
wards ! For he knows that if our social system is in 
error, then that system pays the penalty, as we now 
know once it was wrong in upholding human inequality, 
but it suffered and it sorrowed for a million lives, both 
innocent and guilty. For he knows that nature is as in- 
exorable in her demands for retribution for error as she 
is unerring in her righting of the insubordinate or stray- 
ing will-powder and all other dynamic forces of her being, 
as we are sometimes allowed to learn by seeing signs of 
her displeasure at some rebellious bodies, she sending 
forth, through her pyramidical agents her warning, de- 

151 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

tonating, mountain-shivering bombs before uttering her 
irrevocable ukase, ordering those disobedient rocks to 
their rightful, calmly harmonious contact with all her ele- 
ments in due order faultlessly to a common union cen- 
tre. Thus he expectantly awaits, soon to see those social 
grievances redressed, political wrongs righted and human 
rights retrieved. For he sees that, though nature is seem- 
ingly seen serenely smiling, yet in silent consultation 
with her supreme king, force, she unmistakably sends, 
forth her agent, this time eminently fitted for the office 
by deep-rooted frenzy and impassioned mind, wrought up 
thus as the legitimate result of the long endured, unholy 
alliance of law and wrong, and, through the dispensa- 
tion of their first born, oppression, the ruin wrought to 
peace of home and heart, being forged by the perversion 
of the wiser teachings of our social system ; to explode a 
spark of her displeasure before demanding that inevitable 
retribution that all evil doings some time all must ex- 
piate; in the fated agent we behold the form of man 
and name it — anarchist! Then, convinced is he (the 
wise man) of social wrongs and questions not, but fer- 
vently though despairingly hopes that man will see his 
error, dissolve oppression and repent before 'tis too late! 
Now, if one individual, whose property is valued at 
$3,000, can by paying a premium get $i,ooo for his circu- 
lation for to purchase his necessary supplies with, which 
in turn has to be bought and paid for with money, or if 
with labor, the laborer has to be paid and supported and 
his supplies bought and paid for, and so on ad infinitum, 
then, why not every other individual similarly situated in 
active production receive $i,ooo for his circulation, say, to 
start with on March i, or any other appropriate time, in 
order to be able to pay cash for his supplies ? We have at 
least some 10,000,000 such individuals so situated, and nearly 
60,000,000 more daily and hourly endeavoring to get sight 
or hold of one of such dollars. Such an amount as this 
would give us $10,000,000,000 circulation, or nearly $150 
per capita, which would only amount to the seven-twen- 
tieths of our annual production, not taking into account 
our real or natural wealth, this being what might be 
termed as representing one-third of our crop or annual 

152 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

total production, and not yet touching on the security 
of the banker, our real or fixed property. 

Should we put, according to banking customs, one- 
third of our real property value, God only knows how 
much over $30,000,000,000, we would have in circulation, 
which $30,000,000,000 would be over $447 per capita. 
Still this sum is more than equalled by the total assets of 
our railroads, about $11,000,000,000; manufactories, 
$8,500,000,000, and one year's agricultural crops, $12,- 
000,000,000, making a total of over $31,000,000,000, yet 
not forced to call on all the other of our industries nor 
glance with a covetous eye on our real property. 

We should endeavor, by comparisons with other coun- 
tries, to get at a very generously low, approximate valua- 
tion or estimation of our total wealth, and in the mean- 
time take a squint at their circulation, in proportion to 
their resources and population. Divine-right-blood dis- 
pensation won't go in calculating according to that sys- 
tem in vogue in countries whose histories are elaborately 
embellished with wholesale murders, misery and men- 
dicity, but that is the history and the system copiously 
quoted from and idolized by our native-born aliens. 

France has but 39,000,000 population and less than one- 
seventeenth of our area, or about the size of Texas In pro- 
portion to our population and area, if both were equally 
appraised in determining the valuation of nations, we 
would be worth nineteen times as much as France. But 
suppose we come down to ten times, since France was 
always our friend, is a sister Republic and admirable 
French patriots, we will not be hard on her. According 
to the most liberal anglomaniacal estimate of our total 
wealth, the valuation is only set at $80,000,000,000 — 
where they get this small estimate, it is hard to surmise, 
and it may safely be set at anything over $200,000,000,000. 
Then it is fairly reasonable to suppose that France is 
only really worth the one-tenth of $80,000,000,000, or 
$8,000,000,000, while we find her with a national stock of 
money of $1,581,402,000, all full legal tender and inter- 
changeable in France — not in the United States — except 
$50,000,000 limited tender silver, and only lacking $49,- 
500,000 of as much as the United States, which equals 

153 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS ] 

about the one-fifth of her total valuation. So much for 
an honest dollar circulating medium in the markets of 
the world ! 

Our comparative one-fifth would be $16,000,000,000, 
or over $238 per capita, or almost ten times our present 
volume. She has nearly twice as much silver per capita 
as we have, and her paper is absolute legal tender and 
interchangeable for gold or silver at the option of the 
government, as is also the paper of Germany, Italy, 
Spain, Switzerland, Holland and Greece. In this com- 
parison, as is seen in the preceding paragraph, we have 
only computed about one-half of our real resources, thus 
we humbly ask. Are we not as good and consistently 
patriotic as the French? What has the money-mincing 
mule got to say against that comparatively relative valua- 
tion of American and French realties, and the consequent 
deducible and equitably commensurate circulating me- 
dium of each? We fear, in his decimating deflection, he 
will roundly denounce as a degenerate and disgraceful 
dunce such a deluded defacer of his delectable (but slight- 
ly dishonest) allowance. 

Let us take the Netherlands next, the country where 
the half-king William and Mary went over to war in, 
when he borrowed from "Paterson the Privateer" the 
£1,000,000 — which is not paid yet — that first started the 
Bank of England, and see if its people follow in the foot- 
steps of Paterson's successors. We find she has 4,500,000 
population, or about two-thirds of that of the State of New 
York, and about one-fourth of the area of New York, or 
about the size of Maryland, or less than i/28oth of the 
United States in area, and the one-fifteenth of our popu- 
lation. She has a national stock of money of $25,000,000 
in gold, two and three-fifths times as much silver, or $65,- 
000,000, and one and three-fifths times as much paper, or 
$40,000,000, each and all being full legal tender and inter- 
changeable, except $3,200,000 subsidiary silver. 

We find she does an export and import business com- 
bined — as she is simply a factory for others, otherwise 
she could not support her population — of over seven times 
her circulating medium, which latter amounts to $28.88 
per capita, or $4.54 more than the United States. This 

154 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

large amount of export and import trade is made possi- 
ble to her only by the large amount of money, chiefly 
silver and paper, in circulation. We find that she has 
only the one-fifteenth of our population and less than the 
i/28oth part of our area or potential resources, which 
proportions should entitle us to over 295 times as much 
circulating medium as she has got. But let us reckon 
only about the one-fourth of that, or seventy-five times 
hers, which would allow us $9,750,000,000, or nearly $150 
per capita, by one European Dutch system of finance. 

This relative amount of a circulating medium is arrived 
at by exercising an overindulgent generosity, or, rather, 
in a superior, spendthrift fashion. According to this 
monetary system, that $9,750,000,000 would be thus pro- 
portioned: Gold, $1,875,000,000 (being $65,000,000 less 
than we have produced since 1834 out of American stone 
and dirt); silver, $4,875,000,000; paper, $3,000,000,000. 
Even had we 4,875,000,000, her proportion of silver and pa- 
per full legal and interconvertible money, in relation to her 
gold, we would have : Gold, $604,000,000 ; silver, $1,550,000 ; 
paper, $966,000,000, or nearly $47 per capita. At this Levi 
Carlheimer system ! Wonder if the money-muddled mule 
will lay back his ears and kick with both hind feet at 
once, at this motory mite of monetary munition ! If he 
should, in order to diagnose his case properly, we will 
have to eat more fog. 

We will next look at England, from a distance we 
hope to always maintain. In seeking for a commen- 
surate amount for to constitute the given or proper per 
capita circulation of a nation, it is necessary to bear in 
mind that the import and export trade of a country is 
but of the lowest and most secondary importance, as the 
legal tender of one nation is not the legal tender of any 
other, except when crowns are soldered into one som- 
brero or grandfather's plug, and where the imports ex- 
ceed the exports, or exist without any exports, in either 
case the nation betrays an inability of self-support; there- 
fore, in estimating the total wealth of a country, the 
overpopulation must be considered as a detriment, cost or 
loss, as, for instance, the billeting of an extra pauper on 
the householder or husbandman. 

155 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

Or the property or area of a country of equal area 
and population as that of any other, compelled to hnport 
in order to exist, cannot be rated as high as that of a nation 
of similar extent and numbers that does not have to im- 
port or whose exports exceed the imports. And in a coun- 
try whose exports are largest there the measure of values 
or money should be most plenty, and must be, except 
through misrepresentation, chicanery and treachery. 
When exports and imports are about equal, they have 
little or no influence on the circulating medium of a na- 
tion, as the commodities themselves act as the exchange- 
able or recognized bullion does, in offsetting each other. 
But when unequal, as we find in the commerce of almost 
all foreign countries, the balance has but small annual 
influence on the circulating medium, which is in the case 
of some nations offset by the amount of interest re- 
'ceived from other nations, and in the case of others this 
interest is paid by surplus productions. 

Just as the accursed credit system has done for the 
United States, which was cajoled into borrowing that 
which it could create by law, to say the least, through 
its own blind mistake and the evil intent of the usurers of 
that ever-designing isle and Europe, in order that we 
should be compelled to feed the ever-increasing paupers 
of overcrowded islands and Europe, which, if we had not 
been bought and sold into borrowing this gold, we would 
now possess almost all the coin gold of the world, or 
gold would be demonetized, and we would still possess 
about one-half of all the metallic coin of the world, ex- 
cept it came down to nickel, aluminum and copper tokens 
of legal tender, or why not come to iron money, that gave 
such prosperity to little Sparta, the fame of whose sons 
is so grand and eternal? 

So it is plainly evident to the student of monetary 
science that the circulating medium of a nation, to be in 
unity with all monetary truths and facts, must be entirely 
based on the internal commerce — that is, production, con- 
sumption and increase — of a nation, and that the compo- 
nent parts of that medium of exchange may be, or may 
not be, made up in part of foreign exchange bullion, 
which is necessary only in settling balances or in paying 

156 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

unrighteous debts; and that this internal commerce re- 
lates only to the nation's own production, consumption 
and increase, and not that by them consumed of others' 
productions, and that a due and strict regard be had to 
the potential intrinsic wealth of a nation, when compara- 
tively estimating and regulating the volume of a cir- 
culating medium for any nation. 

Again, the property of a nation that requires for pro- 
tection to support a large army and navy in proportion to 
her area, and that this protection must be constant, not 
only for safety, but even for very existence, cannot 
be rated as high as the property of a nation that is not 
taxed with such an enormous expense as we find Eng- 
land, France, etc., burdened with. As, for instance, if 
it took the constant guardianship of eight soldiers, taken 
from the ranks of the producers of all wealth, labor, no 
matter what wages previously prevailed, society lost the 
absolutely necessary intrinsic value of their production, 
for the protection of six square miles, as the property 
in England requires. Such property, then, cannot be 
rated as high as that in a country where one man is not 
required for the protection of 140 square miles. 

In countries with an area totally inadequate in extent 
or natural resources to support its population it be- 
hooves such country, by all fair means to endeavor to 
keep, and induce others to keep, money scarce or dear, in 
order thereby to lower the price of all natural produc- 
tions. Those known as alimentary products, which are 
absolutely necessary for the consumption of the inhabi- 
tants, in order to maintain life. Those of a fabricating 
nature, in an unfinished condition for the final purchaser 
or consumer, in order that her surplus industrial classes 
may thereby find profitable employment in their com- 
peting manufacture with other countries possessing less 
surplus population, and more natural resources or sur- 
plus, from which latter countries the former is forced, to 
purchase or dissolve. 

Therefore, it would be an advantageous policy, and 
strictly consistent, for a country to adopt the reverse 
financial measures in providing for a circulating medium, 
whose resources and productions are, or may be brought 

157 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

forth, far in excess of their own consumption. Such a 
policy must be deemed just and proper. Just so long as 
nations, like individuals, compete with each other in the 
unending struggle for supremacy, as to their endeavor 
to possess the most possible of nature's gifts, of necessi- 
ties and comforts, for the happiness and contentment of 
their own citizens, and not that of any other nation, who 
are rarely ever thankful for your intermeddling gener- 
osity. Thus we find that the United States and England, 
both to be patriotically consistent, should advance and 
support diametrically opposite reasonings, conclusions 
and methods in determining their respective justifiable 
amounts to be emitted or issued as a measure of values or 
circulating medium, on account of their distinctly differ- 
ent conditions. 

The statesman or student of monetary truths, in en- 
deavoring to discriminate between the systems of nations 
in regard to the amount in circulation per capita, we are 
of the opinion, will find a good criterion to aid him in 
determining the more advantageous or pandemically 
beneficial policy by observing and comparing what is uni- 
versally and appropriately known as the poor people's 
money; what proportion such money or limited tender, 
which is generally subsidiary or auxiliary silver, bears to 
the total stock of money of any nation. As this money of 
the poor is their general full legal tender, if not so by 
law, by which the prevalent poverty of the masses may 
be safely gauged or estimated, and found to be propor- 
tionally greater where the volume of poor money is 
greater, or as it increases in a relative degree. 

For instance, we find that in those countries where it is 
known that their people are most prosperous that this lim- 
ited tender bears but a small proportion to that of other 
countries where the prosperity of their people is known 
not to be tantamount. In the United States it is but as 
one to twenty-one; in France as but one to thirty-four; 
in the Netherlands as but one to forty; in Belgium as 
one to twenty-six ; in Australia as one to fourteen ; in 
Cuba only as one to seventy-seven. 

Now, it is well known that in all these countries 
that the Caucasian race or population are well to do* 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

that illiteracy is proportionally small; that the masses 
generally are employed and contented, comparatively; 
that the per cent, of emigration is but slight; that indi- 
gence is but rare, and abject poverty is unknown; that 
the percentage of property owners bears a favorable rela- 
tion to their area ; that labor is rewarded by better wages 
generally than that prevailing in other countries with 
more poor-money medium for similar services; that the 
number of creatures, through selfish misgovernment, who 
have to perpetually battle and struggle against an arti- 
ficially designed, disgraceful destiny for a mere existence, 
happily, is relatively small, when compared with the more 
unfortunate kind, whose latters' sufferings are irrefutably 
traceable to the accursed system of something for noth- 
ing, or contaminating triune of interest, rent and tithe, 
the principal saffron-tinted tenet of their doctrine being 
scarce money. 

The bombastic Britisher would be offended if told that 
France was the wealthier of the two ; but if the wealth of 
a nation bears, as it should, a just proportion to the 
amount of full legal tender in circulation, then if England 
would be worth $15,750,000,000, France would be worth 
$39,000,000,000. And it is impossible, by any method 
of financial reasoning to conclude otherwise, for we find 
the gold, silver and paper money of France interchange- 
able and at par with the gold and paper of England and 
the national securities of each about equally valuable or 
desirable. Such great divergence cannot be derived from 
the difference in area alone, as that stands in the propor- 
tion of England, etc., twelve ; France, twenty, while their 
circulations stand as fifteen and three-fourths to thirty- 
nine, and the population as, England, thirty-seven and 
three-fourths ; France, thirty-eight and one-fourth, census 
1891. While it is evident that France does not possess 
more than one-tenth of our natural resources and wealth 
such calculation would allow us, then, at least twenty-five 
times the circulating medium of England, or over $400 
per capita and a valuation of $400,000,000,000 of United 
States national wealth. ^ 

In the opposite category of nations we find Turkey s 
poverty money in proportion of four and one-half to 

159 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

five, or gold for the harem, $1.52 per capita; silver for 
the serfs, $1.36; total circulation, $2.88 per capita in that 
enlightened country of 33,000,000 saints. In Germany 
about as one to nine of total stock, the poor money being 
$2.16 per capita, v^hile in England it is $2.63. In Spain 
as one to less than eight, total stock. In Portugal as one 
to nine and one-half, do. In Italy, w^ith over one-half 
paper interchangeable for gold and silver and full legal 
tender, it is as one to nine, do. Scandinavian Union, 
•with about one-half paper, uncovered, as one to less than 
seven, do. In Egypt, under British surveillance, as one 
and one-half to ten, or as one to six and two-thirds. 
In England, under Patersonian-bank-tariff protection, it 
is as one to seven, or the one-sixth of the legal tender. 

For us to enter into a comparison of the several bene- 
fits derived by the one -and the numerous hardships en- 
dured by the other inhabitants of the two sets of coun- 
tries, the first using or having a large circulation of 
full legal tender and comparatively small drudge money, 
and the other, or the second, having a small full tender 
and full amount of pauper chips, we deem it would be 
savoring of pedantry or adjudged as wholly superfluous 
by all, except those whose obdurate obtuseness. ranks 
with their obstinate perversity, and as we do not intend 
to waste the effort trying to enlighten such people,, sim- 
ply because we "don't have to" ; we will leave intelli- 
gent and rational people to draw or infer their own con- 
clusions. 

In order to arrive at a fair comparative estinlate of 
English and American national wealth ahd per conse- 
quent volume of circulating medium, whether we be 
madly prompted to imitate her selfish ideas and methods, 
or whether we devise and adopt a more just and equita- 
ble system, reasoned out in harmony with all other pro- 
gressive ideas, bearing equality and carrying justice to 
all, that, when realized, stand out in bold relief as monu- 
mental milemarks erected to the memory of oppression 
on the broad and adversative avenue leading to the universal 
brotherhood of man ; it will be necessary to keep in view, or 
bear in mind, all those conditions and costly circumstances 
that surround and tend to harass the well-being of England 

160 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

that we have briefly and partly sketched. Also, since 
we had ample proof of her undying hostility to us and our 
institutions for having whipped her fair twice, and then, 
when she found us in an internal turmoil, that she had 
egged on, she dastardly did all she could to injure us, in 
proof of which we have the Geneva Award, and since 
then the "Ernest Seyd" affair ; we do not intend in our cal- 
culations to be as generous with her as we were with 
France, our friend in infancy; but we intend to give her 
that dealing that she always denied to us, common jus- 
tice. 

We find England's population 4,250,000 more than one- 
half of ours ; her area about one-thirtieth of ours, our live- 
stock alone being valued at more than our total circulat- 
ing medium ; if her per capita was based on her live stock, 
it would only allow her $3.04 per capita, or sixteen cents 
more than Turkey, with 33,000,000 population, or sixty cents, 
less than India, with 255,000,000 population. But we find 
her having, per capita, more than six times the value or 
price of her live stock. Why, then, do we not have six 
times the value or price of our live stock in circulation? 
This would give us about $148 per capita. 

According to her own "Mulhall, of London," we find 
that the manufactures of 1888 (the last statistics) of Eng- 
land, France and Russia, with a combined population of 
190,000,000, of textiles, hardware, clothing, beer and spirits 
and leather, amount to only $8,340,000,000 while ours 
amounted in 1892, to $8,564,000,000, or $224,000,000 more 
than the three combined. These industries would entitle 
us to the circulating medium of the three countries. Our 
coal area, 194,000 square miles, is twenty-two times 
greater than that of England, 9,000 square miles. Leaving 
out China and Japan, we have three times the coal area of 
the balance of the world, which resource would entitle us 
to three times the circulating medium of that balance of 
the world, or far more than $400 per capita. The above 
statistics and sensational figures and areas are not given 
by a maudlin American Mudsill, but by the mighty Lon- 
don Mulhall. 

Our wheat production averages the one-third of that 
of the world and could be increased to one-half. Our cot- 

161 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

ton production of 1892 amounted to the nine-elevenths of 
the total consumption of cotton by the whole world, and 
we produced more than two-thirds of the production of 
the world. This industry and the wheat would entitle 
us to one-half, at least, of the total circulation of the 
world. This cotton estimate is by Ellison & Co. Our 
dairy products are six times greater than the British j 
Isles, and it equals one-half of all Europe and Canada I 
combined. This estimate is by Mulhall. So this industry j 
would entitle us to over $100 per capita. Our farm ani- 
mals alone, in 1891, by our Department of Agriculture, I 
were estimated at over $35 per capita. But if we should | 
do like England, in this estimate, and place six times 1 
that in circulation per capita, it would give us, of course, 1 
that relative amount of $210 each. Our tobacco produc- \ 
tion, according to the European production given by 
"Neuman-Spallart," exceed by one-fifth the total produc- I 
tion of all Europe. This industry would entitle us to a ! 
comparative medium of exchange of $130 per capita. 

Our wool industry amounted in 1893, to 330,000,000 
pounds, or two and one-half times as much as Britain 
and Ireland, and more than one-half of that of the whole 
continent of Europe combined, entitling us to a circula- 
tion of over $55 per capita, based on a general European 
system, which it behooves us to condemn. This estimate 
of wool for England and Europe was compiled in 1891 
by the London Board of Trade, so no one can be impris- 
oned for its inaccuracy. 

Our forest area of 450,000,000 acres is six times greater 
than the total area of Britain and Ireland. At the low 
figure of $20 per acre it amounts to $9,000,000,000, which 
would, at a liberal estimate, equal the total wealth of 
Britain and Ireland. This resource alone represents a 
valuation of $150 per capita. 

Our iron and steel production represents more than 
the one-third of the whole world combined; and more 
than England, France, Russia and Sweden combined, 
with a combined population of 196,000,000. This indus- 
try alone, in comparison with these countries, would enti- 
tle us to $90 per capita. These iron and steel statistics 
are to be found in "Swanks' History of Iron in All Ages." 

162 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

Phila., 1891 ; 321, Our production of gold in 1890, or any 
single year for over forty years, was 1,000 times greater 
than that of England in 1890 (her latest statistics avail- 
able), and our silver product being 250 times greater 
than hers. Striking a mean between the two products 
we find we would be entitled for this industry to 625 
times the circulating medium of the British Islands, 
amounting to the daisy little toothpick of $5,850 per cap- 
ita. Those wonder-producing figures are by Mulhall, 
whose partiality and unreliability we will endeavor to 
prove in his bank statistics in that part of this book de- 
voted to banks or interest. 

According to Mulhall, we have produced in gold, up to 
1880, the one-fifth of the world's production for their five 
last centuries and our own production included, or 2,042 
tons gold; total world production, 10,355 tons gold; bal- 
ance of the world, outside the United States, 8,315 tons 
gold for 500 years. By those figures we see that it took 
all the world, outside the United States, 127 years to pro- 
duce the 2,042 tons, the same amount that we produced 
in 104 years. Or that we produced about one and one- 
fourth times as much as the balance of the world in our 
one Republican century from our ugly rock and mud ; 
and of the $1,308,000,000 since produced by the world, we 
produced about $500,000,000 of it, or about the five- 
eighths of the total production of the balance of the 
world. This industry or production would entitle us to 
five-eighths of the total circulating medium of the bal- 
ance of the globe, or about $150 per capita. 

During this century of an enormous gold production 
we only produced about five and one-half times the 
weight of the gold, in silver, in the same time, up to 1880, 
or the one-eighteenth of the world. This statistician 
feels so much ashamed of pompous, bombast, spongy 
England's production of gold that he flings it in among 
the production of all the countries of the earth (except 
ten), all of which small producers yield only one-third 
of that of the United States in its one century for their 
five centuries ; while their silver nearly equals that of the 
United States, being 11,200 tons silver, while ours has 
been 11,600 tons, by which latter figures he endeavors to 

163 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

make the ratio of silver as more than eighteen to one of 
gold, while the world-renowned Prof. Adolph Soetbeer 
places it at 16.8 to i for the 378 years ending 1871 ; and 
the United States Mint reports, from 1873 up to 1893, will 
figure it out at 16.8 to i also, and we may add that during 
the said 378 years the coinage or monetary ratio aver- 
aged below fifteen to one. 

In 1890 we produced, leaving out or excepting Asia, 
Africa and Australia, as much gold as the balance of the 
world combined, and one-half as much silver. This in- 
dustry, therefore, would entitle us to over $8,000,000,000 
of a circulating medium, or $120 per capita, based only 
on the amount of those countries not excepted above. 

To recapitulate, we find that the United States, when 
compared with the British Islands, has: First, nearly 
twice the population, and none surplus. Second, more 
than twice the manufactures. Third, more than thirty 
times the total area. Fourth, coal resources more than 
twenty-two times as much. Fifth, ten times the wheat. 
Sixth, seventy-eight times as much cotton (as the popu- 
lation of the Islands is the one thirty-ninth of the whole 
of the earth's population, and as we produce the two- 
thirds of the cotton and the balance of the world the other 
one-third, or half as much as us, therefore we give the 
Islands credit for the one seventy-eighth). Seventh, 
over twenty times as much copper; we produce as much 
copper as the whole world combined, entitling us for this 
industry as much circulating measures of value as that of 
the whole world. Eighth, six times as much dairy prod- 
ucts. Ninth, ten times as much tobacco, giving her credit 
for her population, as compared with Europe, while we 
know she produces none, as well as several other of our 
productions. Tenth, two and one-half times as much 
wool. Eleventh, eight times as much live stock. Twelfth, 
two times as much iron and steel. Thirteenth, more than 
twenty times the amount of forest, as we do not wish to 
get too high. Fourteenth, fifty-five times the produc- 
tion of gold and silver; this is allowing her, and in ac- 
cordance to her part population of the earth. Fifteenth, 
eight times less expense, or better off, from maintenance 
of army and navy. 

164 




PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

In this computation we find the United States entitled 
to the proportion of, as 275 ^^ is to 15; or the United 
States entitled to 18 7/30 times as much circulating me- 
dium as England has now; that is, $700,000,000, total 
British Islands' stock of money, as given in Mulhall's 
statistics, which would give us $12,763,000,000 national 
stock of money, or over $190 per capita, while this cal- 
culation strictly adheres to the British valuation of our 
resources; and it is well known that none of our flour 
passes through her sieve, except it is exceedingly fine 
and small. 

To strike a mean between the comparative circulation 
of the United States and that of the circulation of Eng- 
land, $190; of the Netherlands, $150, and that of France, 
taking ten times her national stock of $1,581,000,000 and 
dividing it by 67,000,000, our population, we get $236 
per capita. By this mean, by adding the three and then 
taking the one-third, we get $192 per capita for a Euro- 
pean, commensurate circulation for us, which is gradually 
growing to the proper dimensions, that the United States 
should possess to get even with the baby-balloon-bauble- 
peddling financiers of Europe. 

For all scarce money advocates and monometallists all 
the foregoing valuations and statistics must have an over- 
whelming fascination, as most of them are given by the 
Merciful Mulhall, of that big commission agency, Lon- 
don, and a few by their other henchmen. Secretaries of 
the Treasury and mint directors ; lest fault would yet be 
found, we called in the London Board of Trade. 

We have seen that everything that goes to make a 
country rich and prosperous we have from twice to one 
hundred times as much of as other nations have, while 
our national debt is only about $14 per capita. But we 
find France has a debt of $116.35 ; British Islands, $87.79, 
while some of her boasted dependencies, as she calls 
them, have still higher, West Australia having $150.23; 
South Australia, $321, and Queensland, $33346 per cap- 
ita each, while all European countries range in debt from 
$30 up to $100 per capita. 

There is no country in Europe that can bear a compari- 
son or relative valuation with the United States on the 

165 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

$86,000,000,000 basis, but has an average over the one- 
sixth valuation of their total wealth resources, less their, 
debts, as a circulating medium. Now, all fair-minded 
men know this to be an indisputable fact and truth. 
Then, may we ask, what has the United States done to 
that American Pope of the Shermanation Army and his 
cohorts, except to make millionaires of them instead of 
expatriating them, that the said United States would 
not have the one-sixth of its $80,000,000,000 as its circu- 
lating medium? 

But let us glance at the $80,000,000,000 valuation. The 
annual consumption and accumulated wealth or increase 
amount to $35,000,000,000, and, estimating the total fixed 
or real wealth at five times the annual production, this- 
would bring it up to $175,000,000,000, while in Europe 
an acre of land is estimated at from ten to twenty times 
or years of its annual yield or production. Now, ten 
years' rent for bare land alone — while rent averages $7 
per acre — would be $70 per acre, or $161,000,000,000 for 
bare land. 

We find also by the census of 1890 that the total as- 
sessed property reported was assessed at $24,250,000,000 
in laying the assessment for taxes ; the valuation of prop- 
erty in dift'erent states ranged from 10 per cent, to 50, 
and some 100. So, estimating it at six times the assessed 
valuation — which would be moderate to get at the mar- 
ket value^we get $145,000,000,000. 

• Out of 1,150 fire insurance companies, we find in the 
reports of 523 of them that they have an insurance on 
houses, etc., or property injured by fire — not land— and 
.that their risks amount to $16,500,000,000. Allowing only 
one-half of that amount for the other 650 companies, we 
get $24,750,000,000 on houses or buildings, etc., alone, 
which should not be considered over the one-tenth of the 
value of our total realty, which would, therefore, appraise 
it at $247,000,000,000. 

Why, even the railroads alone are claiming assets of 
almost $11,000,000,000. The railroad property could not 
certainly be worth over the one-fortieth of our total 
wealth, leaving it at $440,000,000,000; but that is ''limited 
■express" calculation. But one would suppose that we 

t66 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

should be allowed to put sufficient money in circulation 
to equal the assets or valuation of our distributing agent 
on land. This would only give us at the one-fortieth 
of our wealth but $164 per capita. 

Certainly the Noble Schemer himself will not kick at 
this, for he knows that if we were to get the one-third, 
according to banking customs, methods and systems, 
there would not be gold, silver, paper and brass money 
enough among all the governments and banks of the 
world when, even assisted by the American Pope as 
Noble Schemer, to supply us. And he knows that on 
this fraction of our wealth the railroads borrowed from 
the jabbering Jews of Europe $5,250,000,000 up to 1891, 
which ought to leave their market value, according to 
banking, $15,750,000,000. Then, how does that chime 
with the $80,000,000,000 European and American alien 
valuation? Or do the)^ pretend that railroad property is 
the one-fifth of our wealth? Or for every mile of track, 
sidings, switches and all, we would be allowed the equiva- 
lent of 5,889 acres of land, leaving out all other property? 

We can scarcely believe that any money loaner would 
be so confoundedly avaricious or so confusedly unpatri- 
otic as to deny us the one-twelfth of the money for our 
circulating medium sufficient to carry on our annual 
transactions; since we do not as a nation intend to sell 
out, but merely wish to have somewhat near the one- 
twelfth of the amount in circulation of what we exchange 
annually to carry on our simple barter. To this end let 
us invoke the aid of Bradstreet's agency's figures. 

We will first take the statistics of December 22, 1892, 
before the workings of the panic became widely known 
to the general public. Of the sixty-six cities reporting 
their bank clearances, fifty-seven of them have over 30,- 
000 population, and nine of them below that number, 
with a combined population of 12,000,000, or about two- 
elevenths of the whole. This 12,000,000 did a business 
in the week ending December 21, 1892 of $1,509,785,000; 
allowing five and one-half times this amount for the busi- 
ness of the whole people for one week, we get about 
$8,750,000,000, or almost $130 per capita. Or for four 
weeks, or the one-thirteenth of our annual business, to be 

167 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

more correct, we get the sigh-drawing figures of $33,215,- 
000,000, or $495 per capita ; or an annual business of the 
reason-loosening figures of $431,798,500,000, and, count- 
ing 67,500,000 population, we do an annual exchange 
among each other of $6,397 P^^ capita. And b)^ having 
over $200 per capita of a circulating medium, it would 
then be but the one-thirty first part of the annual ex- 
change transactions, which transactions it would be im- 
possible to carry on with our present volume of real 
money, were it not that we are compelled to do over the 
nineteen-twentieths of it with worthless, though expen- 
sive, bank paper and individual notes. But the scarce 
money puppets say that such paper is better than gold, or 
even absolute National Treasury notes. 

For the week ending November 23, 1892, in seventy- 
five cities, with a combined population of 13,180,000, the 
week's clearances that are reported are $1,104,700,000; 
allowing for the whole of the population, five times this, 
would give over $5,500,000,000 for the week, or for four 
weeks over $22,000,000,000, or the one-thirteenth of our 
annual transfers of all kinds reported, about $330 per 
capita, without interfering very bad or hard with our 
real property. 

For the week ending September 3, 1892, the clearances 
from seventy-two cities and towns, with a population of 
near 13,000,000 were over $964,500,000, and only 
five times this for the week would be over $4,823,000,000. 
This latter is one of the smallest week's returns to be 
found, and yet would amount to %y2 per capita for all, 
and only represents one fifty-second of our annual busi- 
ness transactions, and it would necessitate all the money 
in the United States to pass through the people's hand 
three times in one week, which would be impossible was 
not over 95 per cent, of our business exchanged by coun- 
terfeit paper and credit, instead of full tender United 
States money. Oh ! where is the man who wants to pay 
$20 legal debt with $1 legal tender and $9 counterfeit 
and leave the other $10 to be receipted for bv the Angel 
Gabriel ? 

_ For the week ending September 24. 1892, the sixty- 
nine cities and towns reporting, and having 12,238,000 

168 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

population, or the two-elevenths of the whole, we find 
their week's business of purchase and sale, as also pay- 
ment on interest, amount to $1,192,255,000, making for the 
whole people's one week's business $6,557,403,500, or 
near $100 per capita; but for the four weeks' business, 
or the one-thirteenth of the annual barter, making $400 
per capita the sum necessary for the people to do busi- 
ness on a financial system independent of the tribute 
system, or interest for counterfeit money. 

No doubt some bedizened, bell-wether, skin-deep phi- 
losopher and monetary expert will suddenly discover that 
those clearances represent more business than a similar 
number of the balance of the population transact in the 
same time. But we would afifably remind such gentle- 
men that those cities or villages are but mammoth and 
ramified peddling shops, with numerous departments for 
distributing to their inhabitants for consumption the 
products raised elsewhere, and that all the sales that they 
make for their employers must be duplicated five, if not 
ten, times over the same day, in order that the balance 
may not die of hunger either, as also to keep up a full 
stock in your store, and for every dozen eggs bought 
by you another dozen is immediately, if not sooner, 
bought of the farmer to replace yours, and so on. It is 
true that seaport cities take the credit of the business of 
exports and imports, which may be rightfully done, but 
at most should not appear as excess in the clearances 
more than twice. If a producer sends $1,000,000 worth 
to a salesman or a house hired by a commission for the 
purpose, which he sells to a foreign agent, receives a 
check on some bank, that is once; he may pay the con- 
signor with that check, or with it through another bank, 
less his wages, that is twice. If you buy from a foreigner 
some imports and pay him, that is once ; when you sell it 
or consign it to some consumer, that is twice, when you 
receive your check in payment. But either of these trans- 
actions can be consummated, as many are, without ap- 
pearing in the bank clearances. Still, all the excess that 
this would amount to, outside your own consumption 
and fabricating, could only, at best, be the total amount 
of exports and imports, which do not amount to $2,000,- 

169 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

000,000 annually ; then by your clearing them twice would 
appear as $4,000,000,000, which even then would not be 
the one-thousandth part of our total annual transfers or 
exchanging transactions ; but all those, even yet, must be 
exchanged throughout the country before and after- 
wards, therefore or thereby reducing still your one-thou- 
sandth proportion of excess over inland population. 

For the week ending October 5, 1892, from seventy- 
three cities and towns reporting, and having a population 
of 12,780,000, we find their week's commission sales, as 
they produce but little, except preparing unfinished ma- 
terial for consumption and merely, as errand boys and 
porters, distribute by hand and truck the productions of 
others, mostly for their own consumption, amount to 
$1,286,930,000, or, for the whole, five and one-fourth times 
that, $6;756,382,5oo, or over $100 per capita, required to 
do one week's trading, and showing that $400 per capita 
would be required in order to allow us to possess as a 
circulating medium the one-thirteenth of the necessary 
barter or exchange of our production and consumption, 
and yet this would be less than the banks would loan indi- 
viduals by their system if they had it, by which system it 
could be done, and yet not touch on our real property. 
But, to give the devil his due, the banks do the best they 
can, if not better, by loaning us not only all the money 
they have, but, still better, they loan us at the rate of 
$1,000,000 on a capital of $100,000, or $900,000 debt- 
credit-debt-bank-check-backed paper at from 6 to 60 per 
cent, per annum ; and, indeed, he must be hard to satisfy 
that would complain at such self-discommoding accom- 
modations by the bank. But some people are mighty 
hard to please. 

We will now take a week's report from the late spring, 
when some might claim we did not do as much business 
as in the fall, when the crops were moving; but this has 
little influence on our internal commerce, as we consume 
at all times as much as our health and artificially auto- 
genous destiny will allow, while our foreign sales are far 
less, though stated at about one-fiftieth of the whole. 
This time of year but few farms change owners, but other 
realt}" may; but, then, it is only changing mostly from 

■170 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 
I ■ ■ 

I one citizen to the other, but ever remaining American, 
ij and all such property, as well as everything conceivable, 
!' except the Shermanation Army, always sustaining and 
j maintaining such currency, as they are demanding, above 
! the derision and dishonor of despicable, traitorous de- 
I ceivers and defamers. 

' For the week ending May i8, 1893 (the same week in 
j '92 was 1.2 per cent more), from seventy-eight retail and 
I wholesale commission stores or shopping communities 
— commonly called or known as peddling hucksters, but 
who always have their mail directed and stylishly desire 
to be addressed as cities, hamlets, towns or villages — we 
find in population 13,092,000, and in these dull times they 
report only the few dollars of $1,221,547,406. Such a 
week's business for the whole peo£.le would amount to 
$94 per capita, or for four weeks to over $376. 
. Now, did this one-fifth of the population, or less, have 
all the money that was outside the treasury? In the 
next month, June, '93, Carlisle reports that there was in 
'the treasury $538,750,000, under bar and bolt and lock 
and key, safe from thieves, whether banker or any other 
hold-up, which, of course, could not, through occultism, 
be in circulation. In August, 1893, the mint reports our 
whole stock of money, subsidiary silver and all, as 
$1,631,000,000, from which deduct amount in treasury, 
$538,750,000, and we get $1,092,250,000, or $129,322,000, 
less than the whole week's business of less than one-fifth 
of our population; then, again, the banks claim some 
$900,000,000 as capital and surplus. This shows 
plainly that, for the nine-elevenths of our circulating 
medium, not counting bank paper, that we are paying 
interest to the banks for it. x\nd, again, there is the 
shortage of money to be taken into account, of the reserve 
for deposits that the banks are supposed to hold from 
circulation. This bank reserve should amount to nearly 
$1,000,000,000, or within $1,250,000 of all the money out- 
side of the treasury, as the national banks report depos- 
its of over $2,000,000,000 and saving banks $1,750,000,000, 
private banks not reported. The law provides for one- 
fourth of deposits to be retained in banks, or reserved 
from circulation, through not loaning it. 

171 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

Now, can you wonder why we have panics or scarcity 
of money, to reduce the price of commodities for the bene- 
fit of Europeans and to reduce the valuation of our wealth 
and standing among nations, or why it is you hear so 
many deluded Americans uselessly and foolishly curse 
the Shermanation Army? For it is the people's own fault 
principally that does not use, with true patriotism and 
unerring judgment, their great prerogative, their ballot, 
and, instead of voting for the best interests of their coun- 
try, themselves and fellow-man, keep on voting for that 
weird, airy, chimerical, will-o'-the-wisp, their party. 
Well, keep right on; you will soon make a complete job 
of it. As for us, we can go out with the fabulous chickens 
of Montana and pick pure diamonds and gold nuggets 
from the dirt, just like the other chickens, even if we are 
roosters. 

To the thoughtful mind it would seem as though 
a circulating medium of sufficient volume, without the 
intervention of internecine bank paper, to supply the 
whole people with enough currency to enable them to 
pay cash for four weeks' purchases or supplies of every 
nature, would be reasonably consistent with human ideas 
of justice; strictly equitable, perfectly harmless, barely 
commensurate with the deserving volume of business, 
and impossible in or of itself to work any material or 
monetary injury to the nation ; but would, of itself, soon 
dissolve and cause to vanish that fiendish ogre and his 
impish first-born, crucifying credit and papal inferential 
interest. A four weeks' supply would give about $400 
per capita to do the swapping of the country for twenty- 
four days ; that is, if beer saloons were closed on Sundays 
and the church contribution box done away with. But if 
we perpetuate a European system of finance, why not 
establish other like European systems, as a half million 
standing army, or a national church, and, to be consis- 
tent, pay the peacock preacher with "promise to pay," as 
that is all the Bible offers or gives, a future reward or 
promise to pay. Wonder how our present pulpit pounder 
would smile at this primitive proposition of such para- 
doxical principia! 

We will now take an average of the six weeks' business. 

172 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

of five different months, taken at random from a promis- 
cuous pile of old papers, without selection of any sort : 

For the week ending Sept. 3, 1893, $ 964,670,000 

" 24, " 1,192,255,000 

Oct. 5, " 1,286,930,000 

Nov. 23, *' 1,104,700,000 

Dec. 22, " 1,509,785,000 

May 18,1893, 1,221,547,406 (92, ^% more 

divide by number of weeks 6) |7,279,887.406 

Average business for one week of 

the 4^st part of our population |l,213,314,567f 
For the total population multiply 

bysi^: ^_% 

$6,369,901,476 

An average week's exchanges of the people of the 
United States, which would require a volume of money 
equal to $94.37 per capita in order for them to pay cash 
for six days' food, drink, clothing, improvements, etc., 
and that is all any people have on this little globe, even 
though they amass and appropriate the earnings of others. 

It would seem that the amount necessary to carry on 
this volume of business exchanges for less than a month, 
or four weeks, would be perfectly safe and strictly com- 
patible, with the improvements, methods and intelligence 
of this age. There is not an intelligent individual in the 
United States who can soar above egotism and re-echo 
or who can float to that point where he is safe from the 
influences or promptings of pecuniary or mercenary mo- 
tives; that is, if such a one has given the subject of ecu- 
menic economy the attention it deserves and who have 
not allowed themselves to be drawn into the mad whirl- 
pool or scramble for griming gain through their grovel- 
ling innate cupidity; who really believes, or can prove, 
that if there was $400 per capita to-day in circulation of 
full legal tender powers, whether it would be gold, silver 
or legal paper money, or of all three combined, in any 
proportional volume, that it would or could depreciate 
as measured by gold, within this country (not Matabela- 
land), but that it would, on the contrary, cheapen gold 
instead, not alone in this country, but throughout the 
world. But we hear so much boshy bugaboo about cheap 

173 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

money, unwise speculation, too much circulation, etc.> 
from those who know that they -misrepresent, even these 
wild fancies and simply lie, and from those repeating 
parrots or automatic cuckoos, that it is calculated to give 
a healthy person the blind staggers or to cause a sane 
person to loudly lament for the amount of perfidy and 
ignorance that stalks abroad, even in the light of day. 

Is there anyone who claims affiliation with any school 
of political economy that could consistently deny to a 
people a circulating medium sufficient to carry on two 
weeks' business on a cash basis? Then, if there is, we 
say he had better hasten over to the next celebration and 
forthwith cast his carcass — for there is nothing else left — 
beneath the wheels of the juggernaut, and say unto him- 
self or the admiring worshippers, "here goes the vanishing 
imitation of obsolete book polish !" Money sufficient to 
carry on two weeks' business on anything like a legal 
tender cash basis would require at least $220 per capita, 
and this amount would not yet represent, at a European 
valuation, the one-seventh of our real property and but 
one twenty-sixth part of our actual annual transfers or 
exchanges, and would then allow four exchanges to be 
made of every single dollar's worth of our annual pro- 
duction, while nearly one-half of what is consumed is 
exchanged but twice. 

If we were situate like England, it might be advisable 
to make money scarce, for we find in 1890 that her im- 
ports exceeded her exports by over $762,000,000, or over 
$20 per capita, that she is forced to purchase in order 
to live. Now, it is visibly self-evident that she could not 
exist were it not for the interest she receives from Ameri- 
can suckers, among the rest. While Germany that year, 
like others, needed only $226,000,000 excess of imports; 
France, $122,000,000, and so on with every country in 
Europe, except two, all of which could not maintain their 
present population, financial system and standing were 
it not for the tribute they, in the name of the law, extract 
from others, and that their national debts are ever on the 
increase. 

The two countries excepted above are Russia, who is 
more than self-supporting to the amount of about $1.40 

174 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 



jj per capita, excess of exports, and Austria-Hungary, about 
j $1.25 per capita. That year we exported over imports 
|j over $1 per capita, and for the twenty years ending 1892 
j we averaged over $3 per capita for our present popula- 
i| tion of excess of exports over imports, which, if we knew 
i the A, B, C of finance and were honest to ourselves and 
j had sat down on Sherman-ilk in time, we would now have 
; all that, which by this time of itself would yield some 
|| $60 per capita alone; but they are determined to compel 
I us to contribute to the support of the paupers of Eng- 
I land and Europe, on the one hand, and on the other, with 
j all that, and countless millions more, to loll in luxury 
I the Rothschilds and other foreign barons under the eu- 
I phoniously evil expression of interest. 
I We think that we have brought to, or awakened, or 
I called the attention of the mind of all rational, intelligent, 
patriotic Americans or others, enough deductions from 
existing financial facts, systems and customs, both known 
and practiced in the present, as in the past sombrous and 
even dark ages, to convince the most hypercritical that 
any sum less than $200 per capita is not sufficiently com- 
mensurate with our volume of business transactions and 
standing (at the head) among nations, and that anyone 
advocating a less amount does so (possibly from over- 
caution caused by neural disorder) either from evil de- 
sign or sheer ignorance of even the rudiments of finance. 
But, lest that the foregoing should still be found in 
any manner wanting in convincing proofs, we will hastily 
glance at the commercial standing of some European 
territorial districts or nations, and endeavor to simplify 
some deductions therefrom, in the hope of making it so 
palpably plain that even the blind can easily see how it 
is that the Americans are being played for suckers by 
both foamy financiers, foreign and native born aliens of 
the Sherman-ilk-old-demi-reps (by the word "demi-reps" 
is not meant the literal definition of lexicographers). 

We will examine the few countries, in their respective 
order, that may be said to have a relative bearing on our 
monetary condition, affairs or system, using them^ as 
comparates, in an intrinsically commutative and relative- 
ly actual or real valuation. 

175 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

We find the British Islands, with an area of about the 
extent of New Mexico (now knocking and seeking for 
admittance as one of our forty-five states), or the one- 
thirtieth part of that of the United States. Her stock of 
legal tender, as she reports it, is $550,000,000 gold, $50,- 
000,000 paper, or $15.79 P^^ capita, with $2.63 subsidiary 
silver. On this $15.79, according to her own Mulhall, 
1890, there was a banking capital of $1,430,000,000 — 
where did they get it?— or $37.36 per capita, or $21.57 
per capita, based on and backed by solely Paterson-Sher- 
man-galling-cheek, or the gas of smokeless powder. 

The bank deposits, which in England are wholly used 
as secondary bank capital for loaning purposes, and may 
all be loaned out as a circulating medium, as there is no 
bank reserve law for the Bank of England, are given as 
$3,130,000,000, or $4,550,000,000 capital and deposits, or, 
as the statistician gives it, $120 per capita of bank cir- 
culating medium; or $104.21 get-some tender to $1579 
legal tender, or nearly $7 live-on-tender to $1 honest 
money. But it must be admitted that the $7 are at least 
backed by the hopes of Micawber, while it is also allowed 
the best intrinsic value the world ever saw, in the synthe- 
sis of the Shermanic, snivelling sycophants. But, which 
none can deny, that it does perform, and must, all the 
functions of absolute money until a money panic or popu- 
lar fright comes along as a natural, periodical conse- 
quence, then the "letter of lice-nse" is taken from the 
closet. And now, then, who dare doubt the absolute 
powers of the paper money king? 

We find the United States' bank circulating medium, 
deducting bank reserves, to be about $49 per capita, or 
$71 per capita less than that of England, and backed by, 
or based on, about $23 of absolute money, of which 
one-fourth is already paper, leaving $26 per capita, backed 
by the divine gall of the delectably deluding banker, 
coupled with the mercenary perfi.dy of some and the 
laisser faire, or let-her-go-Gallagher style, or ignorance of 
the balance. The bankers and their satellites tell us that 
gold alone is enough for our circulating medium, and 
that there is money enough in circulation, because the 

176 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

Bank of England officials said so. Some people would 
not tumble if a church steeple toppled on them ! 

They tell us that the British Islands has only some 
$i8 per capita, while Mulhall tells us (of course, they 
wish it kept quiet, so please don't say anything about it) 
that they have not only that to count on as a national 
stock of money, but, besides that, we must remember 
that they have a bank circulating medium of $120 as well, 
in order to maintain as high as possible the current prices 
of their exports and to carry on the trade of the two lit- 
tle islands and also to prevent a depreciation in land 
values, which ranges from $100 to $300 per acre for farm 
land. Since we seek but very little information on this 
subject from any other source but English, he further 
informs us : 

That the national debt of the 38,000,000 population of 
the islands, less the amount of sinking fund, is $87.79 P^^ 
capita (United States, $14.63), or $3,350,000,000. She 
would barely sell for twice that amount at forced sale or 
public auction, for that amount is nearly all the coin gold 
of the world, and she would not want her price in silver, 
while on a gold basis, she owes nearly all the gold in the 
world, and yet we are asked to come to the same eternal 
debt-doubling,- condition ; to which debt must be added 
some $760,000,000 per annum, or $20 per capita, that they 
are forced to purchase and import over exports in order to 
exist at all ; but the interest they receive from outside 
suckers keeps their heads above water. But if there was 
such a thing as universal repudiation and all to make a 
fresh plunge, it would simply mean the erasure of the 
nation, of the British Islands, from the political map of 
the world. See? Why universal repudiation of past un- 
righteous debts is decried, although it is well known that 
under the present system they can never be paid? 

He tells us, further, that the inhabitants of the whole 
earth are compelled to subscribe some fifty-three cents a 
head each per year to keep the English people from 
starving, or, the only other alternative, the comparative 
depopulation of the little Isles. Also, that the English 
laboring class or producers, when they cannot raise 
enough from outside suckers, have to pay for interest, 

177 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

national debt, averaged at 3 to 4 per cent., and on bank 
loans as recorded at 12 per cent, which means at least 
that bank capital and deposits may be safely averaged at 
6 per cent., so that it amounts to another $470,000,000, or 
$12.50 per capita. American per capita interest on similar 
debts, according to those reported, averaging it even at 
10 per cent., only amounts to $6.40 per capita. 

That, in order to keep the country intact at all, it is 
absolutely necessary to permanently maintain for a ter- 
ritory the size of one-fifth less than the size of Montana, 
six times a larger force of men in the army and navy than 
that required for or in the United States. That they are 
compelled to build and maintain an enormous merchant 
navy or marine, at an absolute loss to the well-being of 
all society, but which must continue or end in national 
decay, in order to try to peddle their fabrications to other 
nations more fortunate than they, and to collect from 
all over the world the surplus provisions, to them abso- 
lutely necessary for human subsistence, as most of their 
people get tired living on London fog and 'alf-and-'alf 
charity. 

So that, view it as we may, as a national enterprise 
the British Islands is a losing investment, and a miser- 
ably poor criterion to go by in adopting any measure or 
system whatever, of social science or integrant structural 
part of such; and cannot, by any possible method of 
reasoning be apprised at the one-twelfth even of our 
relative, commutable, intrinsic valuation. But for the 
nonce allow the one-twelfth. Then her national debt 
amounts to about one-half of her real valuation ; and her 
banking capital — wherever they find it — of $1,420,000,- 
000, exceeding the one-third of the national debt and also 
exceeding the one-fifth of her total comparative valuation 
on an $80,000,000,000 United States valuation basis, while 
her national stock of money is the one-tenth of her total 
valuation or wealth. How is that for honest money? 

The disunited Islands have two and one-fifth acres per 
capita, including roads, town sites, building lots, etc., 
while the United States have, excluding large lakes, 
thirty-four acres per capita for 67,500,000, or nearly twice 
her population, or more than sixteen times wealthier in 

178 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

the mother of all productions, land. Our national debt, 
the one-eightieth of our wealth at an English estimate, 
or forty times better off regarding national debt, in pro- 
portion to national wealth on the same basis. Our bank- 
ing capital, less than one-hundredth part of our total valu- 
ation. Why should not our commodities and real property 
be cheap ? England's total relative wealth valuation, or the 
one-twelfth of the United States' $80,000,000,000, amounts 
to only $210 per capita for her population. Her total 
stock of legal tender, limited, silver tender and total 
bank circulation of every available kind, capital, depos- 
its, etc., $138.40 per capita, or $30 each, more than one- 
half her total wealth, on that $80,000,000,000 United 
States basis and the statistics of her dearlv beloved Mul- 
hall. 

The United States* total circulation, from all similar 
sources as the above only amounts to $73.34 per capita, 
or a little over one-half that of the little Islands. While 
our comparative total valuation amounts to over $1,208 
per capita, or six times more than theirs, and sixteen and 
one-half times more than all our circulating sources of 
every description, while they have nearly twice as much 
of all sorts of circulating medium. Do you wonder why 
now how it is that our realty is low in market price, 
compared with other countries? Yet we are told that we 
have enough money in circulation, we must avoid un- 
wholesome speculation, and have honest money, and in 
the same breath we are told and counseled to pattern by 
England, with, the one-fifth to one-half her total wealth in 
circulation. Oh, when can we remove the financially 
suicidal scales placed on our eyes by the home and foreign 
dissembling, rapacious, mortgage-clutching, interest-lap- 
ping leeches! 

Why not place in circulation as absolute money the one- 
fifth of our total "English estimate" wealth, say, $16,000,- 
000,000, or $242 per capita, and have it all absolute 
money, instead of one-seventh legal tender money and 
six-sevenths counterfeit paper of the banks or I promise 
to pay, forty-eight hours after Gabriel shoots off his 
bugle? Or why not place the one-tenth of our total 
wealth, which should be $200,000,000,000, but, say S80,- 

179 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

000,000,000, in circulation as absolute money, $8,000,- 
000,000, or $121 per capita, if you still want the banks to 
loan out the other half, then we may get it at i per cent. 
per annum ; that is, if you cannot yet agree or decide to 
cast from you those Satanic institutions, the banks. See ! 
You may here notice that we only denounce the inani- 
mate things, and not, like the great Thomas Jefferson, 
calling the bankers, singly and collectively, hell-hounds! 
No, we are not near as heavily built as Jeff}^ was. 

Germany or the German Empire, contains an area 
of less than one-seventeenth of ours, or 50,000 square 
miles less than Texas. She has 49,500,000 population, a 
combined national debt of $1,950,000,000, or an average 
of $40 per capita, some members of the federation owing 
more than others; United States, $14.63. Germany's 
stock of national legal tender is $810,000,000, or $16.38 
per capita; limited tender silver, $2.16 per capita, or $108,- 
000,000. Her bank capital is about one-half her national 
money, or $425,000,000; deposits, but $730,000,000, or her 
total bank circulating medium only $25 per capita. These 
figures are by Mulhall, and therefore need have no doubt 
about it but that we can clearly see that Germany is in 
no sense the ''wild fiat money"" country that England is, 
as Germany's total bank source circulation is but $233,- 
000,000 more than her national stock of money, or $4.85 
per capita, which leads to the inference that the people 
entertain a righteous fear of banks, and circulate to a 
. great extent their own money, and it also shows unmis- 
takably a far healthier financial condition than England, 
and less unwholesome, foul-gas speculation. 

But from an American point of view^ a very poor spec- 
ulation, on the whole, since she finds it necessary to keep 
five soldiers and one horse permanently guarding every 
two square miles of territory, and twenty men and three 
horses ever ready at tap of drum or strum of trumpet, 
whenever needed, to hold her down ! Fritzy. Also as 
large a navy as she can scrape up pfennings genug to sup- 
port. She requires a donation of sixteen cents per capita 
from all the other inhabitants of the globe in order to 
keej3 her out of Davy Jones's locker. 

She received $1,000,000,000, or over $20 per capita from 

180 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

France some twenty years ago, but that is all gone some- 
where, and we find her in debt $1,950,000,000, or $1,000,- 
000,000 more than her whole stock of money. So, with 
about $40 per capita combined national debt; $4.50 per 
capita more imports than exports; with only two and 
eight-elevenths acres per capita, instead of thirty-four, 
or less than one-twelfth our per capita land wealth; 
twenty times the army to support ; only one-tenth of our 
live stock ; one-thirtieth of our gold production ; one-fif- 
tieth of our silver production; one-half of our iron, and 
one-half of our steel productions ; the one fifty-fourth of 
our coal area; the one-tenth of our copper production 
(according to Merton & Co., London) ; our forest area is 
more than three times the total area of all the German 
Empire, which, at only $20 per acre, ought to be worth 
all Germany; with only one-third our dairy products; the 
one-eleventh of our tobacco; with only the one-fifth of 
our wool ; with a little over one-third of our textile, hard- 
ware, clothing, beer, spirits and leather manufactures; in 
1890-91, according to Consul-General Goldschmidt, her 
principal cereal production, wheat, was but the one-sev- 
enth of ours ; cotton, none ; we would compare her wiene- 
wuerst and limburger, aber das ist uns, zu gering. 

We have tried all methods of calculation, from Ray's 
arithmetic up, and through his algebra, and even consult- 
ed Euclid himself, but failed to bring Germany's poten- 
tially commutable and intrinsically comparative wealth 
up to the one-tenth of the relative American wealth or 
indispensable realty. But we find her on the $80,000,000,000 
basis, with more than one-tenth of her wealth as a circu- 
lating medium of absolute intercommutable gold, silver 
and paper money, and a circulating medium from all 
sources, national stock, total bank deposits and bank 
stock, amounting to the three-eighths of her total wealth, 
or over $3,000,000,000, or $61 per capita. Our correspond- 
ingly relative circulation would amount to $447 per cap- 
ita. This latter information is given for the producing 
scapegoats only, as the interest fiend and his aberrant 
advocates are well aware of such facts, so in the latter's 
case its reiteration would be but a waste of printer's ink, 
if nothing more. 

181 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

France is in about the same relative category as Ger- 
many, with a larger national debt, of nearly $6,000,000,- 
000, not allowing for sinking fund, less sinking fund, 
about $4,500,000,000, but paid $1,000,000,000 of that to 
Germany about twenty years ago. She has a little smaller 
area than Germany, or 60,000 square miles less than Texas. 
With less than the one-hundredth of our coal area; 
one of her colonies, Algiers, produces less than the one- 
hundredth part of our copper, or about 160 tons per 
annum; less than the one-sixth of our iron and steel; 
in 1890 she produced the l/i20th part of our gold, and 
one-twentieth of our silver, annual productions ; less than 
one-half of our wool ; one-sixteenth part of our tobacco ; 
one-fourth of our dairy products; a little over one-third of 
our wheat ; cotton, none ; two-sevenths of our manufac- 
tures of textiles, clothing, hardware, beer, spirits and 
leather; twenty-three times our standing army; a far 
larger navy ; about $3 per capita in excess of imports. 

So, to be consistent, we cannot place her higher than 
at one-tenth of our valuation, while we find her with 
three and one-third acres per capita, which fact alone 
keeps her from bankruptcy, as her national debt is enor- 
mous, which is, less the money in the sinking fund, 
$116.35 P^r capita, though which seems to have a salutary 
effect on her people by inculcating in them a holy horror 
for banks and interest, as the following figures show: 

On the $80,000,000,000 United States basis, we find 
France with about one-fifth of her total wealth repre- 
sented by her national stock of intercommutable gold, 
silver and paper money, nearly $40 per capita full legal 
tender and about $1.25 per capita limited tender, while 
her total bank capital, $700,000,000, is $91,000,000, less 
than one-half of her total national stock of money, $1,581,- 
000,000. Her total banks and savings banks deposits are 
but $1,199,000,000, or $30.70 per capita, and are $382,- 
000,000, or $9.86 per capita less than her total national 
stock of money, while our deposits are $2,300,000,000 
more than our total national stock of money. Is there 
not a plain lesson in this — how a small country can pay 
interest on an enormous national debt, without going 
much deeper into either private or national debt, simplv 

182 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

by avoiding, as much as possible, that accursed banking 
|| system, with its vampire interest? We find that her cir- 
,1 culating medium, from all potential sources, national 
I stock, bank capital and all deposits, aggregate about 
j $3,500,000,000, or only $90 per capita; yet it would on the 
I $80,000,000,000 basis represent the seven-sixteenths of 
j $8,000,000,000, or her total wealth. Our comparative per 
j capita circulating medium of national stock of absolute 
i money alone would amount to $239 per capita. Our me- 
j dium of all potential circulation, such as national stock, 
I bank capital and all deposits, would amount to $522 per 
capita, and then there would be no kick a-coming if we 
owed $60,000,000,000, or $90.00 per capita ! ! ! 

Now, if a country like France, with not the one-tenth 
of our resources, can borrow of bankers $6,000,000,000, 
which would leave her estimated by usurers and money 
loaners generally at three times the loan, or $18,000,000,- 
000, then the question forges to the front, Where can 
Mulhall and all our imbecile cuckoos and parrot-prating 
appraisers unearth any other numbers or figures than 
$180,000,000,000 in calculating our representative or rela- 
tive measure of wealth? Every true American wonders 
continually why it is that no newspaper or other publica- 
tion can be found, with the slightest shadow of even luke- 
warm patriotism left, to prompt them to humbly petition 
our self-appointed, imitating and mercenary appraisers 
to deal out to us some smoky impartiality when setting 
an estimate on American wealth, resources, institutions 
and manhood, for it seems they will measure others in 
their own bushel. We hope that the Arkansas Traveller 
and the Arizona Kicker will take this hint and in future 
make the air resound with patriotic yelps about Ameri- 
can uselessness and servility. 

Austria-Hungary is lower in the scale of comparison 
than the preceding countries. Her territory is a little 
less than France, but her population 3,000,000 more. Her 
national debt is $70.84 per capita; her coal area insig- 
nificant ; one-tenth our iron and steel ; less than one-hun- 
dredth of our copper; one twenty-eighth our wool; une- 
third of our tobacco; one-fifteenth of our wheat; land, 
onlv three acres per capita ; one-seventh of our manufac- 

183 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

tures of textiles, hardware, beer, clothing, spirits and 
leather; our forests are nearly four times her total area; 
her army is about fifteen times larger than ours; her 
dairy products, one-fifth of ours. 

So that her comparative wealth cannot be reasonably 
placed at other than the one-fourteenth of ours. Yet 
we find her with $i per capita gold and $6 per capita 
uncovered paper. Now, with our $9 per capita gold, this 
system would entitle us to six times our amount of gold 
for a legal tender paper currency, or about $54 per capita 
of full legal tender greenbacks alone, not taking into 
account our fourteen times more wealth. How is that 
for gold standard, scarce money? Are the Austrians de- 
serving of more credit than the Americans? But in this 
connection we should not forget to inform, with good 
grace, the Joneses and Stoneses that this Austrian paper 
is not made a legal tender for Mississippi, Alabama or 
Arkansas, but just for Austria alone; neither are their 
gold florins, which are simply bartered at their commer- 
cial price, which is established or fixed by law, and that 
all mints are open to them at a legal and fictitious ratio. 

We find her with $40,000,000 gold, $90,000,000 silver 
and $260,000,000 paper uncovered, or per capita, $1 gold, 
$2.25 silver and $6.50 paper, which the whole people, and 
not their traitors, back it, or total national stock, $9.75. 
Fourteen times this would give us a national stock of 
$136.50 per capita full legal tender. Her bank capital is 
$225,000,000, or over five and one-half times the amount 
of her gold and nearly twice the amount of her total 
gold and silver. Where do they get all this bank capital? 
Her total bank and savings bank deposits are $1,123,000,- 
000, . or twenty-eight and one-fourth times her stock of 
gold. Her total deposits, bank capital and national stock 
would give her a combined potential circulation of $43.45 
per capita, which should make ours fourteen times that 
amount, or $608.30 per capita; or, in another way, her 
total circulating resources amount to nearly one-third of 
her total wealth. Then why not have the corresponding 
$26,000,000,000 for ours? These seem to be hard shots, 
coming from such a slow country as Austria, and it really 
seems that the pellets are delivered faster than they were 

184 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

in her muzzle-loading war of 1866. Italy bears a worse 
comparative proportion of relative wealth than any of 
the foregoing countries. We find her area similar to 
Nevada, and about the same as Arizona or Colorado, or 
far less than half the size of Texas. She possesses two 
and one-fourth acres per capita, her population being 
placed at 31,000,000. Her national debt is $2,324,000,000, 
or $76.06 per capita. 

If Colorado had such a sum as her part or share of 
our national debt to pay, $2,324,000,000, you can try to 
imagine how the present truthful, honest, patriotic Gov- 
ernor would devise a just and equitable legal tender sys- 
tem that would enable that State to pay off such an in- 
debtedness in far less time than Italy, and have a fastidi- 
ous, fancy, frothy Senator to steal his plans, to aid the 
nation, financially lamed by traitors, over the stony 
street, that was strewn with rocky wrecks of blasted 
hopes, scattered far and wide by an artificial panic, and 
instead of the paper or silver dollar, suggested by the 
true American Governor, who never believed that the 
financial affairs of the nation could be properly adjusted 
by parting his hair in the middle, being dubbed a fan- 
dango dollar, it would then be right royally baptized in a 
flood of Extra Sec, and be solemnly christened as honest 
money, the "Dollar of Grace." 

We might ask poor Mexico whither we are drifting, 
but we recall the fact in our history that we once before, 
instead of asking Mexico to help us and hold the light 
for us, so that we can see where we are at, we by law 
declared the Spanish-milled dollar a full fledged legal 
tender American dollar, and, young as we were then, we 
did not have to act the fool before the world and ask 
Mexico for something to sober up on. 

We find Italy with a gold and silver production so 
small that both do not amount to the i/30odth part of 
our gold production ; her iron and steel is less than one- 
twenty-fourth of ours ; her copper less than one-fortieth ; 
her coal is so insignificant that it is below any consider- 
able comparison; our forest area is more than six times 
her total area; our coal area is nearly twice her total 
area ; her wool the one-fourteenth of ours ; her daily prod- 

18s 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

ucts the one-twelfth; one-sixth of our wheat; one-four- 
teenth of our manufactures of leather, clothing, beer, 
spirits, hardware and textiles; only two and one-fourth 
acres per capita ; more than ten times our army, with less 
than one-half our population ; $2.80 per capita excess of 
imports over exports, and $76.06 per capita national debt, 
with only $3 per capita in gold to pay for it all. 

She is certainly in a poor plight to stand comparison. 
but if everyone else was as found of tapioca pudding as 
we are, then there might be an excuse to be partial to her. 
.but for the sake of infallibility, we cannot very well place 
her correspondingly reasonable and natural valuation at 
any more than the one-thirtieth of that of our relative 
wealth and resources. 

We find her with a national stock of $307,000,000 ; $93,- 
000,000 gold; $16,000,000 legal tender silver and $163,500,- 
000 full legal tender or uncovered paper mone}^ and $34,- 
200,000 subsidiary silver, or total, $9.91 per capita. She 
has nearly $2 paper to $1 of gold. Now, if we had our 
moderate and just proportionate amount, we would have 
at least $297,30 per capita, in the proportion of about 
$100 metallic tokens and $197.30 paper tokens or green- 
backs, all full legal tender and interchangeable with gold 
and silver. Or, if we only had thirty times her national 
stock, instead of her relative per capita, we would have 
$136.44 per capita of national stock, to which, we suppose, 
you would add the bank elephant circulation at 1^ per 
cent. Her bank capital is but $125,000,000; her total de- 
posits, $761,000,000; national stock, $307,000,000; total 
circulating resources, $1,194,000,000 (population of Italy 
proper, 29,500,000) ; about $39.75 per capita. With thirty 
times this, we would have a relative total potential me- 
dium of $35,670,000,000, or $532 per capita. How does 
that suit? 

Let us examine briefly that busy, little country we 
hear so much about ever since that half-wholey King 
William and Mary went over to, to carry on that great 
and glorious campaign in — the Netherlands, or lowlands, 
or Holland; it was larger then than now. Indeed, some 
people are prone to make light of the most important 
events in the world's history, and would even liken that 

186 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

memorable campaign to a common raid by one of our 
Indian chiefs, such as Rain-in-the-Face, because, as they 
pertly remark, poor Billy did not have sense enough to 
come in out of the wet, and that he was so excited 
when he got the loan of that £1,000,000 through Pater- 
son the Pirate, which loan was the foundation of the 
Bank of England, and is still due and unpaid ; that he 
started off without waiting to pull on his boots, or, as 
they put it, barefoot. Now, we think that here they are 
mistaken, for even as early as his day the people wore 
boots made of straw-rope, so intricately wound around 
the foot that the wearer was compelled to sleep in his 
boots. See ! No doubt the assertion arises from an over- 
sight of this undeniable fact. 

The Netherlands contain an area of the 1/284 1 h part 
of that of the United States, or about one-half the extent 
of West Virginia, not one-half South Carolina, nor one- 
fourth Alabama, not one-fifth Missouri, but about the 
area of Maryland. It has a population of nearly 4,500,- 
000; it has one and three-fourths acres per capita and 
a national debt of $430,500,000, or $95,56 per capita; 
nothing small about that, a debt amounting to $54.60 per 
acre, for all her little land and water! Our comparative 
debt, with 284 acres to her one, would be $120,615,000,000, 
or $1,786 per capita. That would be a fair price for 
Missouri land, with five and three-fourths times her area 
and only three-fifths the population of the Netherlands. 
If the people of Missouri had their relative share, ac- 
cording to their population and area and consequent 
wealth of an equitable national stock alone, they would 
have $278.43 per capita, as the national stock of the 
'Netherlands, of gold, silver and full legal tender and inter- 
convertible paper money is $28.88 per capita. Since the 
fence was taken down is a Missourian not as good as a 
platt-Deutscher? 

Her mineral and metallic productions are so small that 
no one would give any statistics of them, although she 
produces considerable salt ; her dairy production, the 
one-eighth, and her wheat the one-fifteenth; her manu- 
factures of clothing, beer, spirits, hardware, leather and 
textiles are but the one-fiftieth of ours. She exists prin- 

187 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

cipally on barter, dairy and wheat; her imports and ex- 
ports amounting to $220 per capita, but her excess of im- 
ports amounts to $19 per capita per annum, so that her 
total productions, and profits of barter, fall short $85,000,- 
000 of supporting her population, or, in other words, the 
balance of the people of the world are taxed six cents 
each for her support, but it will all be- paid back when 
Rothschild makes his will, then is the time when Ameri- 
can chumps will tumble to the racket. 

So will it ever be, debts running up and ability to 
pay them decreasing, while the present monetary system 
prevails, and individuals and corporations are allowed to 
collect interest on the public circulating medium, with- 
out at least the total amount of interest being issued as 
a part principal directly and annually by the government 
to the people, which of itself would tend to lower the 
rate of interest, if nothing more; just so long can the 
producer starve, if he chooses, but he must allow the 
banker to revel in luxury on" the productions of others. 

The poor, little country is forced to support more than 
three and one-half times that of our army, or over seven 
men to the square mile. They are a very busy people, 
iDUt, like a whole lot of American financial cuckoos; 
they are ever trying to pay a $10 debt with a $1 bill, and 
pay 10 per cent, interest on the $10, and still have the 
$1 as a charm, while they try it just once again, and see 
if they can't make it win this time ; neither of which 
seem as yet to be convinced that twice two are only 
four, but are still wholly engrossed, guessing how many 
beans make five. 

In order to allow our enemies to prove that for once 
we were lavishly liberal, and that we reason like a wild, 
ignorant spendthrift, who has been qualified for finance 
by owning a gold mine, we will, without regard to ex- 
pense, place her relative wealth at the one-hundredth 
part of that of the United States, although we know that 
the pro rata part is too much. She has $25,000,000 gold; 
$61,800,000 legal tender silver; $40,000,000 legal tender 
paper, and $3,200,000 subsidiary silver. If gold alone was 
only to be considered, this proportion would allow us to 
have on our stock of gold $604,000,000; total coinage of 

188 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

full tender silver dollars of $1,493,000,000, and issue $966,- 
000,000 full* tender greenbacks, or $45.40 per capita of 
national stock alone, and not taking into account our 100 
times more wealth, for this would leave it at $4,500 per 
capita. Her bank capital is but $70,000,000, or a little 
over half her national stock. 

Her total deposits are but $70,000,000 ; since being situ- 
ate close to France, like them, they have learned the evils 
of banks and interest. Her bank capital, total deposits 
and national stock amount to $270,000,000, makiijg a total 
circulating medium from all possible sources. Suppose 
we take fifteen times that for our population; then loO' 
times that for our relative wealth ! Let us not have those 
figures printed ; but take 100 times only for the re- 
sources, which would give $27,000,000,000, or $400 per 
capita, only the one-half of which, or $13,500,000,000, 
would be total bank capital and deposits and the other 
one-half full-blooded national United States stock, and 
yet that is but the one-fifteenth of what we compara- 
tively deserve. Do we hear any croaking objections to 
the above? No? Well, get a move on yourself ! 

By carefully observing the few brief illustrations above, 
others more numerous and lucid will present themselves 
to the intelligent and unbiased mind, from which incon- 
trovertible deductions must be drawn, to set aside all 
doubt, as to the inadequacy of even $200 per capita to 
suffice for our just, equitable and proper circulating me- 
dium. Such illustrative conclusions and reasonable de- 
ductions may eventually lead our blind leaders, who 
have been ruthlessly wandering in the wake of our politi- 
cal and financial enemies, to sound the national tocsin, 
so that we wander not aimlessly into the chaotic whirl- 
pool of debt, designedly prepared for us by reptant 
rogues, but filial and foreign feigning financiers, and a 
few of our Congressional fakirs. 

But the kid-glove, walking advertisement and fine- 
haired gentlemen, who, in the hope of establishing our 
economic equilibrium, unerringly part their hair in the 
centre, may interpose some objections, such as — well, the 
area of a country is not to be taken as a sure guide in such 
matters, for there is the intrinsic value to be considered^ 

189 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

as well as other conditions. Oh ! Then how theatrically 
wise they look, when, parrot-like, they repeat what to 
them are occult conundrums! We find either California, 
Montana, Colorado or New Mexico each possessing- 
greater intrinsic possibilities, both mineral and agricul- 
tural, than the British Islands ever possessed, since, as the 
Romans claim, they discovered them. True, the Brit- 
ish Islands are surrounded by the sea. 

But this is of doubtful advantage to any nation, except 
those that are not self-supporting and who are com- 
pelled to peddle their wares of handicraft in order to 
obtain, through political charity, the necessary food to 
exist. But such trade on the part of such a nation is com- 
pulsory and fruitlessly expensive to society in general. 
A nation can be rich and wealthy only when its natural 
productions are fully equal to its own consumption, at 
least, and whose foreign purchases are but gew-gaws 
and noxious stimulants. Just as if a farm of lo acres 
could not support two families, then let one possess it, 
and let the other move off. somewhere else, as there is 
plenty of good land sufficient for to supply the increase of 
the earth's population for the next 300 years in South 
America and Africa. 

It is to be hoped that the foreign commerce of the 
United States will ever be on the decline, for we need to 
buy nothing and sell commodities of real intrinsic value 
and receive in return 999 parts of imagination and, 
maybe, one part of inherent value ; but we will have to 
continue now selling our life-giving realities' for purely 
imaginary bubbles until we pay off the penalty imposed 
on us by the Court of Patriotic Education for blindly 
walking into the trap set for us by unconscionable, schem- 
ing scoundrels by doing their bidding and creating for 
ourselves what would and could have been better done 
without — a debt that would puzzle Columbus if he should 
drop in on us some fine day. 

All are agreed that money is but the representative 
or representing measure or reckoner of actual value or 
merit, and that in reality it is not a realty, and that each 
dollar, or integrant measure, should have a universally 
admitted or agreed upon dollar's worth of real value for 

190 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

it to represent, or, as is commonly called, to back it, and 
that such money, when recognized or issued by society 
or g-overnment, is honest money only, and none other. 
That, then, is an absolute, indisputable fact. Now, then, 
without going into any elaborate abstract inductions or 
using any high-rolling deductions, let us plainly state 
that it may be laid down as an axiom of sound monetary 
science that any dollar representing more than $i worth 
of national wealth is a dishonest dollar and a forgery, 
because of its representing or measuring more than $i 
worth, and thus being inevitably made to purchase more 
than $1 worth, since it is admitted by all that the volume 
in circulation determines the purchasing power of a 
dollar. 

From the foregoing irrefutable economic fact, the mon- 
etary scientific maxim immutably and unconquerably 
stands forth as a statuesque, stautory protocol, declaring 
that no nation, or any nation, can issue or cause to be 
issued, placed or emitted too much money into circula- 
tion, with that proper security, dollar for dollar, that 
wisdom and prudence dictates, except that it unwisely 
Issues a larger volume than that which equals the total 
national universal wealth ; and none other volume of 
money but that which is as possible in human affairs 
equals the total wealth of a nation, is, or can be, truly 
honest money for any volume of a more or less degree, 
yields an opportunity for unjust, unwholesome specula- 
tion. 

Therefore, when any nation is casting around, even in 
clear water, for an equitable monetary system, to pro- 
duce a happy or felicitous medium of barter or exchange, 
it will find that there are but few safe anchorages for 
their financial ship of state. One of them is for the 
nation to issue all the money on approved security, at 
nominal cost, that its own citizens may apply for. And 
all such citizens to be compelled to place in United States 
depositories all money that they may possess over from 
three to five times the per capita circulating medium not 
actually needed for immediate employment. 

Another might be to open the mints to the free coinage 
of gold and silver, as before, and government to issue 

191 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

paper money for all public improvements deemed pru- 
dent, necessary and progressive, and adopt a strictly 
observed constitutional stipulation, or rigid statutory 
enactment, providing for the prohibition of the pay, or 
receiving of any interest, increment or emolumental yield 
for the use of money by any citizen or citizens v^ithin 
the jurisdiction of that nation, and also providing ade- 
quate penalties for anyone attempting to, or destroying, 
or perverting money from its true function of circulation, 
by amassing it or renting it out for hire, as money is an 
uncreative, impotential, inert commodity of itself, and but 
a creature of man's imagination, and regulated by socie- 
tary law, v^hich endows it only with unallured, untram- 
nieled, voluntary debt paying or liquidating powers, but 
this law cannot create in it the attribute of regeneration 
or increase, if it did or if it could, then the law of inter- 
est would be as fixed and constant or unvacillant as the 
law of legal tender, intended and expressed, but no such 
intention or expression was ever contemplated for inter- 
est, the rightful definition for which, then, must be select 
or polite robbery. 



19; 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 



PART V. 

NATIONAL BANKS. 

History of some national banks. — Venice. — England. — Sub-treasury 
plan. — Land bank, Chamberlin. — Dead broke half-king. — Billy Pater- 
son of Paternoster row. — Doors of the world. — Bank of England 
chartered 1694 and denounced by over 99 per cent, of the English 
people. — What McCauley and Rogers say. — The annihilator of equity. 
— The incensed, betrayed people. — Piratical advice. — Chamberlin's 
land bank bill passed 1696. — Part the king played. — Netherland cam- 
paign. — People threaten to return the Stuarts. — First run on the bank. 
— Continued hostility to the bank. — Pitt's connection with it.; — Letter 
of license. — Sense of parliament. — Will suckers become trout? — Did 
the paper money depreciate? — Pitt putting the screws to Shylock. — 
When does the bank pay cash? — Run of 1825. — Intrinsic value of the 
notes. — Peel act of 1844. — Panics of 1847-57-66. — Patriotic forgery. — 
Hanging the corpse. — Our bankers imitating and emulating England. 
— Basis of blood. — Hazzard circular. — Addendum. — How ridiculous. 
— Next robbing scheme. — Funding act. — Credit destroying act. — 
American people and the renowned Chopenhauer. — Bewitching the 
silver. — Then commodity-monetization. — Iconographic insanity. — Na- 
tional bankers circular. — Religious press, eh ! — Words from war 
patriots. — Hon. Thaddeus Stevens, Henry Wilson, Sal. P. Chase, Abe 
Lincoln. — Suspension of government silver traffic. — Then, oh then, 
the bonds. — Bankers ineligible for Congress. — Bank panic circular. — 
Extra session of 1893. — Answer of a North Carolina Democrat and 
a Connecticut Republican.^Why be surprised at the action of bank- 
ers. — Sirocco in the U. S. Senate. — Printer, stop ! I'm mad ' 

The history of the national banks show them to be the 
primal, baleful bane, the cankerous curse, the parasitical 
incubus and satanic vampire of all productive and 
thrifty society! Created, as they were, through the in- 
stinct of innate, designing knaves, and of the reaving, des- 
potic ruler, as a coefficient tax, interest or duty collector 
to assist in allaying and satiating the raging rapine of 
that rapacious regime, and had their baptism solemnized 
through the wonted warm waves of human blood from 
the wreck of the weak or defenceless, who might be- 
tray signs of easy conquest or who might meekly expostu- 
late against the fitful whims of the demoniacal extor- 
tioner; and to enable all those lecherous leiges who 

193 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 



\ 



might claim the most remote connection or affiliation, by 
blood or otherwise, purchased by lurid lucre or luscious 
lust, to luxuriously revel in defiled despumation, through 
the despoliation of the wealth of him who creates all — 
the laborer. In this land of freedom and equality, the 
illegitimate offspring of that merciless, miasmatic mon- 
strosity, should be securely shackled or expelled from our 
land, and its corrupting cacoethes and desecrating marks 
forever expunged. 

Such language, indeed, might possibly sound slightly 
impolitic, immoderate, or inharmonious to the ear of the 
banker of our day, and very different from the eclectic 
doctrines taught by the interest-gluttonous-eating fra- 
ternity to their disciples. But we presumptively hope for 
pardon from the knowledge of the fact that such lan- 
guage is in unison with true American spirit, and borne 
out by impartial, unadulterated history; and if, per- 
chance, he persists in believing or adhering to such doc- 
trines, or in endeavoring to perpetuate such a vital-sap- 
ping, devil-fish institution, let him migrate, bank and all, 
over to the stamping ground of the First National Bank of 
modern, or, rather, mediaeval Europe. There he will find 
the living proof in the squalor and poverty of its people, 
of the sophistries of the self-styled and so-called modern 
financial philosophers, and,, perchance, some page or 
padre might point out to him some archaeological relic 
of a once-famous Republic, dragged from its lofty pedes- 
tal and buried in the mocking mire of mephitic mercen- 
ary memories by the treacherous caress of that seductive 
octopus, the national bank. 

If this liberty-lapping institution is much longer al- 
lowed to go on unrestrained, or unchecked, the anarchist 
and his methods of to-day will be but as the tiny toddler 
with his firecracker on equality the Fourth is to the loo- 
ton gun of the anarchist of the future. But the anarchist 
of to-day, and of the future is and will be but the logical 
result of the tax-consuming, strife-producing, lazy, lolling 
lordling and flippant, flitting financier, with their fairy-like, 
fascinated prey of political poltroons, in their tempting, un- 
interrupted march to social annihilation. 

In this age of enterprise and colossal achievements 

194 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

it is necessary to have moneyed institutions of exchange 
for the better facilitation of commercial transactions, 
both great and small — maybe national depositories, 
maybe banks of deposit, and maybe banks of loan — but it 
is the widely known and fully expressed past, present 
and future demand of the great masses that the govern- 
ment shall never delegate to corporations or individuals 
that power to them delegated by the states, the issuing, 
coining and regulation of all money, and should it ever be 
deemed wise for the government to waive that right, 
or any part thereof, by right it must revert to the states 
from which it emanated or was derived. 

In order to give a slight idea of the inspiration from 
which national banks were derived, we will take a cur- 
sory glance at the Bank of Venice and a more extended 
one at its imitative successor, that idol of our own anglo- 
maniacs, the Bank of England. The Bank of Venice was 
the first bank in the history of modern Europe. Venice, 
before it succumbed to the money-mongers' seduction, 
was at the head of commercial and maritime nations, but, 
being a Republic, Genoa was always urged on by divine- 
righted blood to harass and annoy Venice by almost per- 
petual wars until the government found itself, as Lin- 
coln found this country in 1861, without money, but Lin- 
coln being refused, by the ever-unpatriotic slave, to 
money, a sufficient loan to carry on hostilities, did not 
resort to measures as Venice did ; he created money — that 
inimitable, life-offering, forty-cent greenback — but the 
Government of Venice, in accordance with the light given 
them, resorted to forced loans from the Shylock-lords 
of that day. 

The government established depositories for the collec- 
tion of those forced loans, and from which to pay the 
annual interest which, we are told, was promptly and 
punctually done for over 500 years, while the government 
alone conducted the bank; this lasted until the evil day 
when the nation was forced to succumb, in 1798, through 
the fawning flattery and fiendish design of faithless finan- 
ciers, in conjunction with a ruthless war waged by that 
inhuman tyrant who but a few years after met a well- 
deserved fate, when he died the prisoner of a more cun- 

195 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

ning, brutal lion, execrated and unmourned, on a for- 
lorn isle, inhabited by rats, that burrowed in his black- 
ened heart. 

These depositories were consolidated as one in 1171 
A. D. ; it received deposits in coin, but paid none out, sim- 
ply transferring- one name to another on the books. 

The Jews of Europe loudly praised it as the chief 
factor of Venetian success, but this was when they were 
getting in their fine work on Republican institutions. 
They went so far as to say that its credits were at a pre- 
mium over clipped coins (they could not stop the clipping 
business, though). But we find, through the perfidy of 
bank officials, European Jews and that French heroic 
hyena, the erasure of the Venetian Republic from the 
maps of Jewdom. Americans, beware ! Jealously guard 
the financial liberties of this brightest spot on the planet 
earth. 

The Bank of England was chartered by act of Parlia- 
ment in 1694, just 200 years ago. During this time, and 
for years prior to and after its establishment, the reflect- 
ing, patriotic mind was fully convulsed and absorbed 
with the thought of, and steadily devising plans for, how 
to escape the thralldom of the interest to the money-loan- 
ing leeches, and in devising plans for financial freedom 
among the very numerous measures proposed, showing 
by their numbers and diversified devices how keenly the 
people felt the gnawing effects of usury, as dull as all 
were at that time on the subject of finances, as a sixteen- 
year-old boy now in our public schools knows more than 
their most praised financial philosophers did then, for, 
as we have an English authority, writing in 1868, Ernest 
Seyd, in his work on finance tells us that even in 1816 
that there was no theory in England or elsewhere on the 
single gold standard; there was one, though crude at 
that time and now, which promised relief to the multi- 
tudes. 

The measure devised was the production of one Hugh 
Chamberlain, who is by our own money sharks and 
crouching, snivelling scribblers of to-day, roundly tra- 
duced yet, because his idea will not down, as a quack who 
prepared himself for the solution of financial problems 

196 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

by studying- medicine. Oh, what an awful crime, and 
what treason, even to believe in such a craze, sophistries, 
half-truths, panaceas, etc., etc., as such an idiot could 
conceive ! Anticipating reader, it was the Sub-Treasury 
plan; true it was crude and rough hewn then, by which 
may be judged with accuracy, the comparatively blunt 
financial intelligence of those who submitted to the enact- 
ment of the present Bank of England scheme. 

In 1690 Chamberlain produced a scheme for what he 
called a land bank, which provided that notes or green- 
backs should be issued on landed estates only to the 
full value of the estate, which should be pledged for the 
notes' redemption, or as security for the loan ; it went 
further, also, to allow a loan in these notes for the annual 
income also of the property for the number of years for 
which it was pledged. While the genuinely philosophical 
measure underlying this scheme is plainly discernible, 
yet it bears little else in comparison with the Sub-Treas- 
ury plan of to-day, as that does not propose to issue 
money enough to represent the one-tenth of the total 
land value of the entire country. The plan, however, 
was considered in parliamentary committee, which, in 
reporting it favorably to the House, said in effect : "That 
after maturely considering the measure, for which they 
took ample time to consider it in all its presumed opera- 
tions, that they were unanimously convinced that it was 
thoroughly practicable, and would be of everlasting bene- 
fit to the nation at large" ; but it was never acted upon. 
Here we come to where Shylock got his work in. 

As every one may know the money-mongers of that 
day, as well as of this, were divided into two classes, 
one class represented by what we would now call the 
Rothschilds, the other by the appellation of the Chatham 
street pawn-brokering Jews. The bankers of Amsterdam 
and Genoa, long before the time of which we now write, 
always availed themselves of every opportunity and, bid- 
ing their time, at regular intervals would set agents at 
work to work up other bank schemes, among which was 
one particularly prompted by the Bank of Amsterdam 
and fathered by one Billy Paterson, whose scholarly at- 
tainments, previous gentlemanly avocation and benign 

197 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

religious training, which so eminently fitted him to be 
the most appropriate person to whose lot, fate, could have 
commanded and committed the founding of the Bank 
of England, who we will, bye and bye contrast wath that 
ever-to-be-remembered idiot, Hugh Chamberlin, the 
quack. 

We are told that this all happened in the reign of King 
William and Mary (but they forgot to mention who was 
on top). But William, like all other idiotic kings of his 
day, was always in difficulty with some country or other, 
and consequently, to use, an expression ominously famil- 
iar to most of us, was always dead broke, and the islands 
in such a bankrupt condition that it was always borrow- 
ing from every one and everywhere, and the debts that 
it contracted then has never been paid since or yet, which 
debt constitutes the legal tender intrinsic value of $75,- 
000,000 of Bank of England notes up to 1880, at least, al- 
through we see by our mint (julep) report of August, 
'93, that it is but $50,000,000, and for every $1 of that 
amount of the debt, there is a $1 English greenback 
issued with absolute legal tender qualities. 

At that time the landed proprietors, whose title to the 
lands generally came to them through confiscation, could 
not raise $1 — the Jews who had some refusing to loan 
any to them, on account of the existing hostilities be- 
tween them, arising from the very different financial 
methods, which each in turn urged the government to 
adopt,, and as Parliament, with the aid of the theodolite 
and the best astronomers of that age, could never deter- 
mine where they were at, it will be more easily imagined 
and better than ever described, the deplorable financial 
condition of the island at that time ; even the king in some 
cases having to pay as high as 40 per cent, for the loan 
of money, and those not directly helping poor Mary to 
rule the roost had to pay as high as 60 per cent., a simi- 
lar rate to that now paid by a majority of our people, the 
poor throughout the Southwest and"^ Northwest and at 
times all over our country. 

As an excuse for this existing state of affairs, or high 
rate of interest at that time, through the glib pen of the 
monometallic theorist or scarce money advocate, we are 

198 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

told that it was caused by a King Charles the 11./^ in a 
previous reign, by his most infamous conduct in seiz- 
ing some $6,000,000 that the Jews and goldsmiths had 
deposited in the exchequer; but right here they forgot 
themselves by telling in the same accounts that he always 
paid a fair interest for its use. Just imagine what a panic 
it should cause for an emulative government to force a 
loan of $6,000,000 from such a great and glorious people, 
for which he paid interest, in order to save the honor of 
and maintain possession of their country. 

We are told that from that fatal day Charley's finan- 
cial matters grew worse until the government of William 
and Mary found themselves at the mercy of the Jewish 
street usurers, and as early as 1691 the government was 
publicly casting around for some likely scheme that 
would bring them safe out of their dilemma. Among all 
the measures proposed by the fanciful financial philoso- 
phers, that of Chamberlain found most favor, its support 
being universal, wnth the exception of the money loaners 
or professional interest gatherers. The landed proprie- 
tors were jubilant over it ; the merchants supported it ; 
the masses hailed the idea wnth delight ; the king favored 
it, and Parliament, u.p to 1693, or even afterwards, found 
no fault with it, but instead its committee reported it 
favorably, and now^ w^e come back again to this Paterson, 
who as early as 1691, laid his scheming plan before the 
king and Parliament, but found no hope for his pet 
scheme for two years, and when Chamberlain's scheme 
saw daylight and had been thoroughly discussed Pater- 
son was forced to issue a first edition of the Ernest Seyd 
addition, division and silence. 

Billy Paterson was born in Dumfrieshire in 1657. He 
left home and wandered to a little port called Bristol in 
in 1673, then carrying on a doubtful trade with the Ameri- 
can colonies. He was known to his low^ associates to be 

* Whose head (to make it a blockhead) the}^ chopped off on a 
block, the death warrant being signed by Clublaw Cockney Cromwell, 
perhaps, because a predecessor of Charles Saint Henry VIII. — who 
died a loathsome, unwieldy, helpless mass of corruption — had caused 
to be beheaded, some ninety years before, Thomas Cromwell, an 
ancestor of Oliver Cromwell's. — Montgomery's History of England. 

199 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

possessed of an ungovernable, impetuous desire for those 
occupations which offer the most implicating and hazard- 
ous excitements, but of all his favorite pet was, among 
the many in which he showed undoubted aptitude and 
fondness for active commercial pursuits, the ocupation 
of a most common, illiterate sailor. 

All track or trace of him seems to be lost or buried in 
chartiable forgetfulness from 1673 until we find him of 
record in the province of Massachusetts Bay in 1682, 
plying, with avidity and apparent success, in the honor- 
able and honest pursuit of a piratical privateer. We mere- 
ly and incidentally mention the word, piratical, for he 
never was knov/n to enter the home harbor without some 
peculiar and overheavy cargo, even when England was at 
peace with all nations. He carried this business on, os- 
tensibly trading between Boston and the Bahamas, until 
things commenced to become so exceedingly warm for 
him as he neared the tropics that he retired from the sea 
for good, and registered, among the others, at that great 
centre for all classes who enter into doubtful, active com- 
mercial pursuits at London, 1687. 

Before proceeding further with his bank scheme, it 
might.be a good scheme to quote from his biography, 
written soon after his death in 1718. Also from another 
attempt by a monometallic and something-for-nothing ad- 
vocate, to reconcile his eminent fitness and Puritan faith, 
written as late as 1882, by a historian with an LL.D. to 
his name, but as we suppose that the second L is a mis- 
print and should be an A, so we will describe him as a 
LAD of the name of Kimball. They say, "No doubt his 
enterprises, until he settled in London, would be consid- 
ered by every one with honest intentions as of being, in- 
deed, of an illegitimate and doubtful character, the sys- 
tem of, or occupation of, privateering" (but a very slight 
shade removed from, and, alas ! very often ending in, as 
heartless and cruelly dreadful consequences as the in- 
human, cold murder incidents of pure piracy) ; "but, 
nevertheless, the occupation he followed never for once 
was known to interfere with his strict and righteous, reli- 
gious principles, and (oh, Maria!) history, tradition and 
gossip fail to find the slightest doubt, by anyone of his 

200 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

sincerity, when he did, as all other pious men did and do, 
conduct and lead in prayer meetings, and regularly preach 
like all other chosen of God (particularly on the eve of 
an expected Lay-to), in proof of which choice may be 
cited (his jumping the broomstick) his marriage to the 
(grass) widow of a Puritan minister. He spent several 
years of his most useful life in London in the promotion 
of the most important and successful schemes, which 
alone made it possible for England to grab the greatest 
share of the commerce of the world; the influence and 
teachings of which schemes will be the sole support of 
England in the retention of her greatness." 

Now, to the individual who would prefer the proposed 
method of Chamberlain the crank to that of our emi- 
nently esteemed and superbly qualified hero of the seas, 
we will have nothing more harsh to say than this: We 
fear he will never have his hopes or aspirations realized 
while he keeps on voting for the prestige of the politi- 
cian, and the party that are both committed to follow in 
Paterson's wake. We would say vote only for the per- 
petuation of American principles and American institu- 
tions, or you will soon find yourself not only deprived 
of a home, like the despoiled victim of the privateer, but 
despoiled before long of the power of transmitting to 
your offspring that dear-bought, heavenly prize which 
in recent years you seemed to appreciate so little — the 
right to vote ! 

Paterson appeared in 1687 in London and at European 
courts for the purpose of bringing another scheme to 
the attention of any government that he might succeed 
in impishly hypnotizing. His scheme then was no less 
than the taking of the Isthmus of Panama or Darien 
(there was nothing small or beggarly about his schemes). 
For this proposed enterprise he created the euphonious, 
hair-raising, stage-staggering, significant name of the 
Keys of the Indies and Doors of the World. He solicit- 
ed every government in their turn without meeting with 
success for his majestic enterprise; but in his peregrina- 
tions he formed acquaintances that afterwards were to be 
instrumental with him in propagating and extending that 
inveterate, blighting curse on all thrifty, industrious, 

201 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

frugal society, for which curse they had long since, 
through the basely cunning brain of innate rogues, se- 
lected the eclectic euphonism of Lord-Interest-Bank. 
His new found acquaintances had numbered among them 
no less personages than, from a homogeneous socialistic 
standpoint, the seething, sulphurous scoundrels, such 
as the bankers of Geona and Amsterdam. 

Disappointed at the failure of his world portal scheme, 
but not disheartened, he kept fairly quiet until 1691, when 
knowing that the government, through French and other 
wars, were fairly bankrupt, and then through his illiter- 
ate but cunning, avariciously fertile brain, dashed the 
idea that would make him unjustly rich during life and 
enviably notorious after death, he at once entered into 
communication with European banking acquaintances, 
from whom he received all his instructions and encour- 
agement. 

He told them that the government would onlv be too 
glad to give heretofore unheard-of, exclusive privileges to 
anyone, either a citizen of Hellespont or Hades, who 
could or would furnish a permanent loaning establish- 
ment, based on realty, passed debts, future credit, or on 
the dreamy hopes of the confirmed optimist, it mattered 
not, if such system would only provide for the mainte- 
nance of the horde of profligate, truckling idolators- in 
number necessary at court, that by their revelling in pu- 
trescent foam and pomp, would be sufficient to destroy 
or kill and desecrate all thoughts or ideas of social hon- 
est}^ and virtue ; thus by their propinquity, propagate and 
propagand the unhallowed satanic promptings of class 
distinctions, or holy flesh and earthly carcass. 

He made several trips to Amsterdam. He seemed to 
be laboring under great excitement, caused by the delay 
of sufficient loan for the privileges offered. But not so 
with the wealthy Jews ; they knew that their terms and 
dictation would finally have to be agreed to, as the great 
masses were strictly kept in ignorance of the functions 
and unreal value of money, as they were taught to look 
upon it as a sacred product, like manna, from heaven. 
For nearly two years he kept pressing his scheme, with- 
out the desired success. 

202 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

About this time Chamberlain's scheme was brought 
before Parliament, which immediately recognized in it 
just what was wanted, and Paterson's scheme was con- 
demned and execrated by the masses, but not entirely 
discarded by Parliament. Now or never was the propi- 
tious time for Paterson, so his backers saw the faithless 
and needy members, loaned the government $6,000,000, at 
the low rate of 8 per cent, per annum, and after three 
years of untiring effort on the part of the professional 
money shavers the act was passed April, 1694, incorpo- 
rating the Governor and Co. of the Bank of England 
amid the universal denunciation of the whole English 
people, outside of Parliament. 

The Tories and Whigs of that day denounced it ; the 
landed proprietors proclaimed it treasonable ; the street 
Jews abjured it, and the Catholics detested it as a device 
of the devil himself, given in aid of the despised dese- 
crator King William. Parliament offered as its excuse 
that the king was without money, and then engaged in a 
fierce war in his native Europe; he must have money; 
the honor of the nation was at stake, and so a majority 
of basel}^ bounden slaves to baseless honor born voted 
yes. But now, more than ever, poor, pitiful Billy, the 
half-king and whole idiot, found himself in scalding, nay. 
seething, waters, at home as well as abroad. 

The people would not be appeased. Chamberlain's law 
must be adopted or the Stuarts w^ould be returned to 
the throne. The people hated the idea of yielding their 
most vital prerogatives to the evilly designed schemes 
of professionally and politically public, plundering pau- 
pers, or money peddlers, as they termed them, in their 
unceasing denunciation of centre-rift, fine-haired, bauble- 
bubbling bankers. The storm of indignation and national 
passion was so raging and universal that the new bank, 
as well as the government, feared for their own safety. 

We will here quote from toadying historians, who 
know nothing, if not to write in favor of money, hallowed 
flesh and autocracy. One idolized but falsifying his- 
torian, that escarping cryophorous of equality and equity, 
McCauley, says: "The country members of Parliament 
were delighted at the prospect of being once more en- 

203 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

abled to repair their broken-down fences, replenish their 
larders and give portions, as of old, to their daughters 
(of course, three most heinously treasonable reasons), 
and altogether fully wished well to the scheme (Cham- 
berlain's). But they wished well to it, because they 
wanted to borrow money on easy terms (of course, a 
most contemptible idea), and wanting to borrow, of 
course, they were not able to lend it (the sole reason why 
Chamberlain's monetary measure was not successful, 
which fully exposes the fallacy and fraudulent intent of 
such oily, falsifying, financial writers and the economic 
ruse that they endeavor to defend or uphold, in which 
they so pityingly and ignominiously fail). 

"The moneyed class alone could supply the money that 
was necessary to the existence of the land bank (which 
plainly shows McCauley's ignorance of, or concerted 
intention to hide or deny, the only value of money, its 
legal tender qualities created by the law), and as the land 
bank was avowedly intended to diminish the profits, to 
destroy the political influence and to lower the social 
position (as if a more social, degrading depth could exist, 
even in the imagination of all honest men) of the moneyed 
class. As the moneyed class or usurers did not wish, to 
take upon themselves the expense of putting down usury, 
the whole plan failed." The foregoing are all the sublime- 
ly clownish reasons and paralyzing excuses for the existence 
of that monstrous, social leech, the Bank of England. 

This is what that amorphous, apterous apostle of divine 
right, or sacred, boiling blood, or immaculate bone and 
flesh, and of double-doleful dividends, Thorald Rogers, 
says : "The fact is the landed men hated the moneyed 
men with a bitterness in which envy, contempt, pride and 
religious bigotry were the strongest ingredients. (A 
most puerile, senile attempt to criticise the righteousness 
of the land bank measure.) They looked on their grow- 
ing wealth (without effort) with envy, on their occupa- 
tion with scorn (as it justly deserved), on their birth 
with disdain (but still in keeping with the divine right 
theory that he adores), on their creed and discipline with 
intolerant hate." His last excuse for the existence of 
the Bank of England is a plain, sacreligious plea to the 

204 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

baser, baseless passions of man, aroused at any repeti- 
tion of the indoctrinated bigotr}^ of each seperate human 
religious sect, singing the rant of universal love, and 
playing the roles of adynamic buffoon in the farcical 
mimcry and ludicrously libellous teachings of the char- 
ity of a Jesus. 

Here we can see through the pen of two of the great- 
est admirers of the triune of usury, rent and monarchy, 
what opposition the Paterson scheme met with by all 
classes, so impoverished were they by that wrecking 
bane of usury and the scorching lack of a government 
legal tender currency, backed by the wealth and man- 
hood of the island, who from lack of such currency were 
rendered desperate, but particularly so at the heinous 
idea of government giving to corporations or individuals 
the prerogatives of government only, to issue money, 
when backed by the wealth of the nation, and dictated 
by the clamorously expressed will and wishes of the 
great masses, and this opposition, waged with unabating, 
relentless fury, was still encountered long after the Bank 
of England was launched on the sea of their destiny, the 
craft being universally known as the unmerciful pirate 
packet and named the Annihilator of Equity and Equal- 
ity, to which finally they were compelled to succumb, 
after vainly battling against the purchased power of the 
usurer, who was now ensconced in that office, which his 
descendants have ever since filled ; side partner to either 
pants or petticoat Hermaphrodite. 

The king, now finding his government in desperate 
straits, interviewed the governor of the Bank and Pat- 
erson, who was one of its directors. The haggard and 
despairing countenance of the king, at this first inter- 
view, plainly and visibly exposed, far better than he 
could express it, the mental worry and mortal anxiety 
that he was an almost devoured prey to, from the idea of 
what to him now seemed certain, not only losing his job, 
but also of having to lay his head on the chopping-block. 
At this meeting we are told that the king, having hastily 
announced the purport and intent of the meeting, bewil- 
deringly exclaimed, 'T am not only afraid that this scheme 
will not operate to the benefit of the nation, as I have been 

205 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS \ 

\ 
pursuaded and cajoled into believing it would; but I fear i, 
that I will not only lose the crown, but as well all on r 
earth a man has to lose, if the incensed, betrayed people \ 
cannot be appeased. 1 

Paterson, having rehearsed the Arabian Knights' bene- j 
fits that would accrue to all from his now enacted scheme, 
wound up by saying: Your most gracious majesty need 
entertain no fears, arising from the anger of the populace, 
but you may place implicit reliance in our ability to 
have the people appeased, and become, in short, as docile I 
as lambs. The king, now beside himself with rage (at 
what he now considered the most contemptible insult of 
an adventurer of the blackest record) thundered out: Cur, 
I command 3^ou to explain. Trifle not with me. By 

h -! I am king yet! Paterson, quite unruffled by the 

little episode, with the air of one only owning the total 
land and water of the earth, and a quit claim deed to the 
moon, now slowly and impressively unbosomed himself 
of the next chapter in his soothing, taming, wildcat 
scheme, which ended with, or thus : 

Allow a bill to pass enabling Chamberlain to incorpo- 
rate a land bank, on conditions that he will loan the 
government, say, $15,000,000 at 7 or 8 per cent.; we will 
give you $30,000 to subscribe to the stock when the bill 
is passed, and that will set you right with the people, 
who cannot see our little game, and you yourself need 
never want for an accommodation; as for the rest, it is 
just as easy as falling oflf a newly barked log on a frosty 
morning; to be brief, their scheme will fail, for we will 
see to it that they cannot borrow the money. Before 
the word money had escaped the lips of Paterson, we are 
told that the king, in an ecstasy of joy at the brilliant 
hope for the success of the scheme held out to him and 
also for his own individual security, fell on the neck of 
Paterson, the pirate, and, between his sobs, loudly and 
brokenly exclaimed : O, thou saviour of kings ! 

Now let us see if the foregoing is borne out by the 
felicitous, historical accounts that receive the highest 
laudation and widest dissemination by money-loaning 
lice generally, and all the fervid, fatuous fools who follow 
the fishy fiction of those feculent, felonious falsifiers, 

206 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

whose oily finish of fecund frauds fascinate or fill with 
fainting fear their brains, as the snake, the bird, and 
fends them off from ferreting out the fixed, financial 
ferites of history, such as those given by Rogers and 
McCauley, whose accounts we will strictly adhere to. 

Chamberlain, urged by the people, and now an intima- 
tion from the government, that it thought favorably of 
and felt friendly towards the measure, and that the king 
himself would do all in his power to advance it, and had 
promised to be the first subscriber. At this news the 
people's joy and rejoicings were boundless, bonfires were 
lighted all over, and a special, popular jubilee generally 
indulged in. 

Chamberlain, from the opposition he had encountered 
from Paterson and his few followers, mostly M.'s of P., 
had learned that the one objection of any consequence to 
his measure was that he wanted, as the old bill provided 
for, two or three times more money issued against the 
land than the land could be sold for in a favorable mar- 
ket; so he drew up or drafted a bill asking only the full 
value of the land. The government now wanted the 
loan for the payment of the first half, but a few months* 
time was allowed, of $15,000,000 at 7 per cent., or 
two and one-half times as much as the Bank of England 
had to loan. Of course, Chamberlain never suspected 
that he would have to encounter the slightest difficulty in 
obtaining the money for such a magnificent, beneficial 
concern, so he was only too glad to accept the offer, and 
a bill complying with these terms was introduced, and, 
after a pretended opposition by the friends of Paterson, 
the bill passed in the early summer of 1696. 

The passage of the bill was haled with such rejoicings 
that they were onl}^ equalled in adverse magnitude or 
extent by the denunciations that the announcement of 
the charter of the Bank of England received. But, poor, 
deluded fools they were reckoning without their host, for 
their joy was well balanced by the chuckle of Paterson 
at the idea of how well the scheme was working. By 
the terms of the bill there was given until August i to 
subscribe $6,410,000, which if paid into the Exchequer by 

207 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

that date, it would constitute the subscribers a corporate 
body, under the title of the National Land Bank. 

Also, the bill provided that no money was to be loaned 
on any private or public security, except land, at a rate of 
three and one-half per cent., if paid quarterly, and at 4 
per cent, if paid semi-annually, and that at least one-half 
million must be so loaned every year; everything ready, 
the word. Go, given, the king signed the warrant appoint- 
ing officers to receive the names and subscriptions of sub- 
scribers who were to form the new corporation. 

As to the part the king played in the scheme, we must 
admit in extenuation of the same that he was something 
like our own ruler of to-day — the poor man did not have 
sense enough to come in out of the wet! But when it 
rained hardest tried to shoot soft-shelled, ducks and geese 
with an empty demijohn. His enormous commodity, of 
the marketable sense he possessed, you may well judge 
by the following: Indeed, he was as good as his word 
and subscribed £5,000 towards the scheme, but, mark 
you, next day he leaves his people a prey to the ravages 
of that moneyed octopus, the Bank of England, and to 
that ruin and destitution known only to a people that 
are completely bankrupt and whose king takes the only 
£1,000,000 (the million loaned by the Bank of England) 
in the bankrupt nation's treasury to carry on a war in a 
foreign country, as unrighteous and senseless as it was 
ruthless and ruinous to all, simply because that foreign 
country was his native land, the Netherland campaign. 

But, however, the first of August came at last, but it 
was not the day for rejoicings for Chamberlain and his 
people, for it found in the treasury list of subscriptions 
only the amount of £7,100, including the king's £5,000. 
The fact was that, outside of money loaners, who would 
lose more than three-fourths of their unearned profits if 
the land bank succeeded, the people did not have the 
money to subscribe. But the people were almost frantic, 
and openly accused Paterson and his friends to be secret- 
ly working some infernal scheme to ward off subscrip- 
tions, and clamorously demanded for an extension of 
time, and a reduction of the loan; the more intelligent 
demanded the incorporation of the land bank without anv 

208 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

loan whatever, saying if the present government thought 
that the lands of England were not a better representa- 
tive security, or basis for money, than gold and silver, 
that they could find a government and king that thought 
their lands better than usurers and gold, meaning the 
Stuarts. 

The again-thoroughly-frightened king sought the ad- 
vice and counsel of his seer, Paterson. Of course, he 
advised an extension of time, and a reduction of the loan 
to less than one-third ; so it was agreed that, if they 
would advance £400,000, or $2,000,000, that the bank 
would be incorporated at the next session of Parliament. 
It is almost needless to state that the one-tenth of that 
sum could not be raised by all the friends of the measure, 
although they numbered over 99 per cent, of the entire 
population, and consequently the scheme, as Paterson 
well knew and had predicted, ignominiously failed and 
collapsed. 

But the people vowed vengeance on the Bank of Eng- 
land, should ever an opportunity offer. So they started 
in worse than ever at clipping coins, thus forcing the 
government to call them in for recoinage, which in those 
days was necessarily slow ; now the little circulation, 
thus further decreased, left money still scarcer, and the 
people, whenever they could, collected the notes of the 
bank, to make a run on it at a favorable time for their 
purpose, which run they did make. But Paterson was 
too shrewd for them. 

Having now by act of Parliament been firmly estab- 
lished, the measure of the malcontents frustrated and 
the government in his debt, public!}^ and with the con- 
sent of Parliament, he at once claimed full protection 
from the plotters, as he dubbed the Chamberlain masses, 
which were now by this time strengthened by small indi- 
vidual loaners, because they were chagrined by Pater- 
son's reduction of the then rate of interest, an average 
of 30 per cent., while he wanted the land bank to loan 
at 3!/^ to 4 per cent., because he knew he had the golden 
goose that idiotic Billy was shooting intoxicating afflatus 
at and knew how to preserve her. 

The government was now forced to protect its business 

209 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

partner — for Paterson, the Pirate, and Billy, the Satyr, 
were in cahoots — and when a run was made on the bank 
payment was stopped for notes in the possession of the 
plotters, but notes coming in in the regular order of 
business — that was, in bank agents' hands — were cashed. 
The stock went down from no to 80, but when a consid- 
erable amount of the new coin was coined notice was 
given that 15 per cent, of the plotters' notes would be 
paid, endorsed so on the back, and the note returned 
until all was paid thus. Somewhat similar schemes as 
those followed by our national banks during this and last 
year's money panics.. From this on Paterson knew that 
if his bank collapsed so would the reigning government 
itself, so intertwined is the government with the bank 
that the collapse of one entails the collapse of the other, 
so that virtually to-day Rothschild & Co. are the Govern- 
ment of England. 

The equal-right-minded people of England always were 
and are to this day enemies of the institution, ever heap- 
ing abuse and vituperation on all connected with it. Two 
notable instances of their hostility to it may be cited — 
one during the reign of George 11. , when the bank issued 
a coin known as the five-shilling dollar, which had on one 
side, Geo. III., Dei Gratia Rex (by the Grace of God — 
King, with a big K and a little g). On the other side, 
"5 shilling dollar, Bank of England." Such was the feel- 
ing of hatred aroused in the public mind by this appear- 
ingly frivolous fact, against the bank, that the coinage 
had to be immediately discontinued. 

The other occasion for an exposition of the public feel- 
ing on money matters and against the bank was the 
stamping by the bank on the Spanish-milled dollar — the 
same dollar that at one time was made full legal tender 
by our own government — the impression of 5s. and 6d. 
dollar, and on the head of the King of Spain a smaller 
head of George III. This action was resented with such 
fury by the people that most of the newspapers published 
such satirical squibs as this : The bank, to make their 
Spanish dollar current pass, stamped the head of a fool 
on the head of an ass. 

During Pitt's connection with the government, for 

2T0 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

several years, he held the bank in disfavor. When he 
asked for an enormous loan for those days the bank 
would sometimes appeal for a reduction of the amount; 
his invariable reply was a demand for an additional loan, 
accompanied with the burning intimation that if it was 
not immediately forthcoming that he knew a way of getting 
plenty of money, which would not be based upon fictitious 
metallic value or insane debts, but on the lands and 
patriotism of the Briton. The bank officials feared and 
hated him so that they would sooner see his satanic 
majesty himself than old Billy Pitt, as the boys dubbed 
him in those telling times of tyranny. Each one of them, 
according to the position of responsibility he held in 
the bank, felt, as it were, an electric shock or thrill of 
tensive termagancy take hold of his tidily togged thermal 
tenement at the sound of the fall of his well-known foot- 
steps, and breathed a deeply profound, thankful sigh of 
relief as the terrible incubus and its cause made their 
one exit in the person of the real king of the trio of 
Billies, or Gravel-Pitt-Billy. 

Things lasted thus until long after our War of Inde- 
pendence, from British, egoistic tyranny, which changed 
the policy of the island regarding future moves. Here 
was Napoleon, who must be downed, and, finding the 
bank long past the mark where bankruptcy enters, Pitt 
was forced to use the bank as an institution to carry 
out in part his idea or theory of paper money. So, in 
February, 1797, there was held a secret meeting of what 
is known by the very appropriate, sweet-scented name 
of the Privy Council (a sort of Cabinet meeting), which 
resulted in an order to the Governor and Corporation of 
the Bank of England to stop at once the payment of coin 
in the liquidation of any indebtedness against the bank 
whatever, until the sense of Parliament could be analyzed 
and the infinitestimally miniature button determined. 

It took twenty-four years to find the lost, strayed or 
stolen sense of Parliament, as nominal specie payments 
were not resumed until 1821. (All nations have to fall 
back on paper money in times of direful pressure or 
distress, or to perform colossal, progressive achievements. 
Wonder will suckers ever make good trout!) Here 

211 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

was one-quarter of a century that paper money was abso- 
lute legal tender, just like her paper of to-day, but not 
exchangeable for gold, because they had little or none in 
England, and the only legal tender to be paid out by the 
bank until the scooted, slinked sense could be scented by 
its smell and traced thus to its secret lair and arrested. 
You may ask the question. Did their black and white, 
pepper and salt, or graybacks depreciate, as did our 
forty-cent greenback? I must answer you as loud as I 
possibly can yell, in order that you may not forget it \ 
before you go to the next political convention, NO ! Why | 
so? Just let me whisper it to you in secret (keep | 
still now: Because they were absolute legal tender, with i 
no exception clause on the whitish back; but please do j 
not let the rabble know anything about it). j 

Pitt knew how to put the screws on the Shylocks with ' 
lightning twist. They did not try to purchase legisla- j 
tion neither did they threaten for an exception clause i 
from him ; it would have availed them nothing if the}^ did, | 
because Pitt was a true, patriotic Englishman. We only 
hope that we will find similarly as. true and patriotic, but 
Americans, in the next Congress we send to Washington, 
for all hands and the cook, together with the colored 
coachman, are heartily tired of the scoundrelly perfidious 
or shamefully ignorant majorities we have been sending 
there for the past thirty years or more. 

The bank affairs ran along swimmingly under the 
paper money order, without any disturbance in the finan- 
cial affairs of the nation, as there was no limit to the 
amount of notes the bank might issue. But the people 
all the time studiously agitated their right to issue paper 
money on their lands, etc., in preference of, or to, the un- 
righteous national debt, and the notes based on it fraudu- 
lently issued by a corporate vampire. By this time Billy 
Pitt is succeeded by one Bobby Peel, who might be said 
to belong to the Chesterfieldian school, in that he be- 
lieved in order to be an ideal statesman it was absolutely 
necessary to be an adept in the art of dissembling. He 
saw that Republican ideas were growing apace and 
spreading like the Russian thistle, and that the general 
or popular opposition to the Bank of England was one 

212 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

of them, so something must be done to arrest popular 
clamor. Then, in 1819, Peel brought a bill into Parlia- 
ment, providing for the resumption of specie payments, 
deceivingly holding that a bank should pay coin for its 
notes on demand. 

Let us see how and when the bank pays cash on de- 
mand for its own notes. The bill, of course, passed with 
a whoop, and the bank prepared to resume in two years 
afterwards, 1821. It was given out carefully that the 
bank had over $100,000,000 in gold and silver (although 
silver was demonetized, but not for the bank, as we will 
show further on). The enemies of the bank thought 
that this amount was too big for their pile, so they con- 
cluded to wait until the bank's coin capital (there is no 
reserve law, so that the bank is the great Mogul of the 
nation's finance in every respect), through course of 
business would come down within their reach, so the 
resumption passed off quietly, yet there was no restriction 
to its issue of notes, whenever it deemed it necessary to 
issue them for its own purposes. 

Things went thus along smoothly for the bank, as no 
opportunity offered itself to its numerous enemies until 
1825, when they made a concerted move to burst the 
bank. Never suspecting at the time that if they had 
fully succeeded that they would have made their nation 
an easy prey for any power that desired to avail them- 
selves of such an opportunity; but all their enmity was 
directed against the bank. They had about succeeded 
in bursting the bank with a dynamitic report of a cun- 
ningly created balloon, when an order in council, or a let- 
ter of lice-nse, was given and posted in the window (oh, 
what omnipotent work of man!), and the old notes that 
were stowed away for such an emergency were forthwith 
issued in payment of all debts, without giving them time 
to blow the foul smell of the Privy Council off them. It 
was a loud-crying shame ! Fie ! Pugh ! Fetid, extrinsic 
paper money! 

Peel, now becoming angered at the people, championed 
the cause of the bank, and henceforth the letter of lice- 
nse was boss of the business. But so untiring and stren- 
uous was the opposition continued by the people that 

213 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

Peel was driven to his wits' end to find a silken, slippery, | 
slimy solution for the problem. At last, by years of sleep- \ 
less study, he found one that would put the scales on 
their eyes completely that a locomotive could not drag or 
Billy Peel them off. That was the bank act of 1844; but 
had we been born then another tale would have to be 
told, for the bill would never have passed. Oh, my dead 
pony for a seat in Parliament ! Virtually the act under 
which the bank carries on its nefarious business to-day. 

The bill allowed the bank to issue black or white backs, 
but no green, because Ireland laid towards the setting 
sun, too fully adorned by the emblem of grief already, 
and such a fresh insult might explode the cap that primes 
that eternal bomb that will one day shatter that isle of 
tin to fragments that will fly to join the spirit of Pater- 
son, the pirate, on the turbulent, chopping seas of despoil- 
ing, damnific interest. The notes to be of no less denomi- 
nation than $25, which was afterwards altered to allow 
$5 notes to the amount of $75,000,000 of debt, that the 
government then owed them, and to issue notes, dollar 
for dollar, for all the gold and silver they might own — 
one-fourth silver only to be allowed of the entire bullion. 
(Still silver was demonetized to foreigners.) N. B. — 
And whenever the bank issued notes in excess the gov- 
ernment was to get the benefit of it; and, besides, the 
order in the council, or letter of license, was to prevail. 
How is that for a gold basis, or, how is it for a paper 
summit, or, how is it vice versa? Now you see and now 
you don't! Oh, come off the perch! Say, partner, 
strange, isn't it? 

So that whenever the coin of the Bank of England 
gives out they can issue notes indefinitely, and their note 
is an absolute legal tender within the little dominion of 
the British Islands. But our apodal, anglomaniacal, gold 
standard advocates, who literally have not a foot to stand 
on, nor a solid basis to place it on if they had, will tell 
you, with a blending of blandlike, childish innocence and 
ignorance, that what makes a Bank of England note as 
good as gold is because you can get the gold for it on 
demand; but suppose you do not demand the gold, like 

214 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

nine-tenths of the English people, is it not a full legal 
tender, gold or no gold? 

Again, its exchange for gold is optional with the bank, 
for whenever the bank feels so disposed it will exchange 
gold or silver for its owm notes, and whenever it wants 
to suspend it does so at its own discretion. But when 
the gold and silver of their own capital become exhausted 
what puts the intrinsic value in the notes issued on the 
government debt, and reissue of their own coin notes, 
and in what they can issue in excess of which the gov- 
ernment may get credit for, or part of the interest? It 
must certainh'^ arise from the peculiarity of the ink, or 
perhaps the paper, for ours is green and theirs is corpse- 
like white ; that is sufficient to scare the doubts out of 
anyone, even a patriotic American greenbacker. 

Or, rather, is it not that order of the Privy Council, 
which has not even the doubtful shadow of law about 
it, simply the mandate of a few men, who meet in secret, 
as their title, privy, implies ; who in effect, parrot-like, 
repeats or says : Behold ! We are the god, with a small 
g and very loud wh. o. a. ; who now endow bank paper 
with indestructible intrinsic qualities, until such times as 
in our infallible judgment we may deem it to the further- 
ance of our glory and personal profit, to command, 
nay, will it otherwise ; when, lo ! our people shall feel, 
know and believe as before. 

And why should it not be so? For, to all intents and 
purposes, except to the artist mocking the works of na- 
ture, the piece of paper has about as much real, intrinsic 
value as the piece of gold, and has identically the same 
virtue when the law creates it, a stipulated debt liquidat- 
ing factor; that is, it is the mute agent, silently expressive 
by what is stamped thereon of the mandate of society, 
which alone gives the coin over the 999 parts of its com- 
mercial value, or monetary price, or debt paying quality, 
or value, which is but at best a creation of the imagina- 
tion and but a wild guess, expressive of the will of soci- 
ety, through the instrumentality of recorded law. 

This act of Peel's was the thirteenth extension and 
modification of its charter, and the second one which 
exempted it from all taxation whatever, which feature 

215 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

makes it sparkle in the eyes of our anglomaniacs. Each 
extension granted fresh privileges to the bank, and more 
slavery to the people, and disgrace to unadulterated en- 
lightenment and equity. Each extension was for a given 
number of years, with the mocking proviso that if the 
government gave twelve months' notice and paid up its 
full debt, then the charter was thereby revoked. Oh, 
what a song and dance, or silly, puny, gassy farago! 
But, however repeatedly the people wanted this last pro- 
vision to be complied with, and always stands ready to 
pay off to the best of their ability, their national debt, 
but such is not the policy of the bank, and consequently 
cannot be of a toadying government. 

As no financial measure, or any other of importance, 
can pass through Parliament without the approval of the 
bank, thus so far the people might as well shovel chaff 
against a Kansas cyclone as to try to pay debts without 
the bank's consent. There is no enterprise of any import- 
ance entered into, or can be, by the government without 
first consulting the governor of the bank, and should it 
not receive his approval it is laid away to mold among the 
musty archives of the dead past. The bank is the deposi- 
tory of the nation's money, and it pays the interest 
on the government's bonds, called consols, from consoli- 
dated debt ; in any stringency it will loan money on those 
bonds, as they are somewhat similar to the debt that 
first gave the bank existence, but it charges whatever 
interest for the loan it may choose to, as there is no 
strings on it. 

During the panics of 1847-57-66 the bank would have 
gone down to Davy Jones's locker, possibly to consult 
some of the stubborn spirits that had resisted the priva- 
teer of Auld Lang Syne, had it not been that the sense 
of Parliament, once playing hide and seek, deserted, or on 
an awful tare, had been found in company with the wan- 
dering Jew, and on getting an injection of strychnine 
was sobered up, and ever since kept securely confined in 
the Privy Council's closet, except in times of popular 
distrust, when it is taken from the closet and brought 
forth, by its rank smell to establish sense and confidence 

216 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

in the weak and doubtful. It has received the very appro- 
priate title of the letter of lice-nse. 

It is a document that is calculated to strike terror to 
the heart of the golden calf, the silver elephant, the nickel 
statue, the copper horse, or the brassy banker, for when it 
comes forth, no matter what the trouble is or what desti- 
tution stalks abroad, or who is queen, king, all immedi- 
ately and sedately retire, for now his most august majes- 
ty Paper Money rules the roost, and when chewing snuif 
uses the crown through mistake for a cuspidor. Strange, 
isn't it, this intrinsic paper money dream? 

Since about 1750 it is an undeniable fact that the be- 
lief was prevalent amongst all classes not connected with 
the bank that the forgery of notes of the bank was in 
no sense criminal ; that every Englishman was the peer 
at least of Paterson and his successors, and that if they 
had the right to print money, because he loaned money to 
the government, in time of war at 8 per cent, interest, 
that they who willingly gave money in paying taxes, in 
war and peace, and asked no return, but simply the com- 
mon right to life and property, had a far better right to 
print money, especially if the bank should lose thereby, 
as it had been robbing them long enough, getting inter- 
est on the debt and interest from them, besides for the 
money that the government alone should issue and regu- 
late. 

We find people of all ranks among the list of forgers ; 
the first of note comes a wealthy, respectable dry goods 
merchant, named Vaughan, of Stafford; then a stock 
broker and brewer, who got away with $1,000,000 of 
forged bank notes; then comes a banker, about 1825, who 
got away with over $2,000,000, who acknowledged that 
he did so because that the bank was not only an enemy 
to him, but to the whole nation as well; and so on 
through an almost innumerable list. For over one hun- 
dred years the annual loss to the bank by this forging re- 
prisal was estimated by the bank at $200,000 a year. It 
may be asked. Was this simply the doings of the natural 
thief? It seems not, for still it kept on, notwithstanding 
that the bank strenuously and determinately used its in- 
human, fiendish, drastic powers, without sparing trouble, 

217 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

expense or life, to check it from the start, as we will 
presently see. Now for the next page or two of humane 
English financial history! Brace up your nerves, and 
grit your teeth — no faint-hearted, fair ladies wanted! 

A law passed, inflicting capital punishment, was strict- 
ly enforced— so strictly that even a poor clerk in the 
bank, having forged a note for such an insignificant 
amount that their historians were ashamed to give us the 
miserable number — was hung, like a cold-blooded mur- 
derer, which drove his sister crazy, who might be seen 
for years, always faultlessly dressed in white, call every 
day at that accursed institution to inquire if her brother 
had yet returned, ever to receive the fiendishly freezing 
answer. No. Yes, in this nineteenth century. Ah, what 
inconsistency! What a glorious, gold standard country! 
What institutions sustained by such sacrifice for us to 
imitate! Pugh ! Out on such inhuman- brutes ! Is this 
the system you would set up in the land of a Jackson and 
a Jefferson? Do you remember the bewitchingly appro- 
priate name the latter had for the banker, the hell- 
hounds? 

But why select one case, for the number in one year 
alone in the first quarter of our present century reached 
the astonishing figures of 352 convictions; and all 

were ? No, not all, for some were so dastardly mean 

as to cheat the hangman, not out of his fee, but out of 
his fun, by committing suicide. But English etiquette, 
conventionalities, amenities and sense of decenc)^ and 
fastidious propriety was not to be baffled or outdone, but 
they added another laurel to their glorious civilization by 
hanging the corpse for spite!* Just imagine a multi- 
millionaire New York banker hung for forging the notes 
of another bank, and then you can faintly picture, with 
some lucidity, the peculiar, typical English idea of char- 

* But we charitably acknowledge that that was an improvement on 
the methods of Henry VIII., who had caused^ the bones of Becket — 
supposed to be a saint — who had been buried for nearly 400 years, to 
be summoned, the bones were tried in court for treason, etc. Court 
was held in Westminster Abbey; the bones were found guilty and 
sentenced to pay Henry VIII., King, whatever jewelry was in the 
tomb, and then to be burned. — Montgomery's History of England. 

218 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

ity, money and honesty, with weeping justice nursing in- 
sane ladies, for a background! And those are the ideas 
that both political parties wish to import to the land of 
a Washington, a Jefferson, and a Lincoln ! Fie on such 
traitors ! 

We have previously mentioned that banks of issue had 
the ceremony of their blatant, blandishing, blustering, 
blasphemous baptism performed by the ablutions of the 
madding waves of human blood. Well, was this not so 
with the bank of Venice ? Was the Bank of England not 
chartered on account of the loan of £1,000,000, in order 
that that blood money would carry on the war in the 
Netherlands, a country removed by the sea? And did not 
its directors, shareholders and friends at every anniver- 
sary of its incorporation for over 150 years, instead of 
its celebrators joining in a germiade, did they not jabber 
with joy in their jaunty, jovial jubilee at the jingling 
news of the jugular job of the jocular hangman, judi- 
ciously sacrificing human beings on the altar of legalized 
robbery, thus offered up to perpetuate the social-slaugh- 
ter-house institution, and to still further polish its satanic 
coronal ? 

Was it not that unfortunate, unpatriotic, dishonest 
debt that was contracted then, and bonds issued for the 
same, which was baptized in the rivers of blood, spilled 
by brother slaying brother, and father murdering son, 
that now, 1894, forms the basis of our damnific national 
bank system ? Oh, Jehovah, the Most High ! We be- 
seech you, deliver the race from the blind fury, the fiery 
web of desolation,, the network of annihilation, of Satan ! 
This subject too keenly rends the heart of the true Ameri- 
can, so the least said concerning it the better. Pay off 
the debt and wipe out the last existing national witness 
of our misfortune on which the bankers live and loll in 
lecherous luxury. 

Such is the system and such are the people from whom 
we borrowed it, the English, whose methods and laws 
that we hear our scrubby political surf or the driftwood 
of all progressive, social streams prating and bellowing 
about so much, like a hungry parrot, and so sedulously 
advising, their followers to imitate and adopt, as though 

219 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

we did not have too much of them already. Or can you 
read history? Or do you want to emigrate? If so, get 
up and git! 

But it may be said that, beyond our copying in part 
and of advising that their methods be adopted, that our 
national banks have no fellow connection with the Bank 
of England and all the other banks of England conduct- 
ed under its dictation, for none can long exist without 
its consent, as its action towards a certain kind of inde- 
pendent banks known then as the limited liability, dur- 
ing the London bank panic of 1866 (the principally ac- 
cused cause of which panic our bloody, bleeding greenback 
was accused, and loudly and roundly denounced and deep- 
ly plotted against, for through the aid of the greenback 
such was our extraordinary recuperation and resumption 
of prosperity that it detracted attention and investments 
from such English financial enterprises as purchasing 
stocks in and advancing large sums of money towards 
Russian, Italian and Belgium building and railroad wild- 
snake schemes), fully demonstrated as those limited 
banks, on their asking for loans from the Bank of Eng- 
land, were answered by the laconic phrase of. Not a 
farthing. But those banks existing by the grace of the 
great, tin-isle rajah were pulled through the hole by the 
nape of the neck, and the hole pulled in after them, 
through the instrumentality of that omnific ukase of his 
most gracious rnajesty, Monnaie de Papier le premier, 
letter of lice-nse. 

Let us now see if the financiers of the tin island have 
nothing in common with, or no peculiar interest in, our 
national banks, and if the latter do not follow to a dot, 
the advice of their far-oflf treacherous cousins and our 
nation's enemy. We will quote that famous thirty-two- 
year-old Hazzard circular, which was issued by the agent 
of London capitalists, to the New York capitalists (a 
special directory of which is duly kept and revised) in 
1862. Read it and tremble for the fate of the nation. 
Should we ever be insane enough to leave its chances 
in the hands of our fine-haired, gold-mounted, rattle- 
snake, copper-headed bankers. 

"Slavery is likely to be abolished, by the war power, 

220 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

and chattel slavery destroyed. This, I and my European 
friends are in favor of, for slavery is but the ownership 
of labor, and carries with it the care for the laborer, 
while the European plan, led on by England, is for cap- 
ital to control labor by controlling wages. This can 
only he done by controlling the money. The great 
debt, that capital will see to it, is made out of the war, 
must be used as a means to control this great volume 
of money. To accomplish this the bonds must be used 
as a banking basis. We are now waiting for the Sec- 
retary of the Treasury to make the recommendation 
to Congress. (Oh! God of heaven.) It will not do to 
allow the greenback, as it is called, to circulate as money 
any length of time, as we cannot control that." This 
is sufficient to burst the blood vessels in the region of the 
heart of a true patriot. Such freezing calculations and 
speculations of our most bitter enemy. Inspired by the 
deep, dark, deathly, senior-devil himself. Comment on 
it for an American would not only be superfluous, but 
an insult to his intelligence, no matter how slight his 
education, for he can more accurately measure in the 
mind the enormity of its heinousness than all the ex- 
pressive powers given to mortal could approximately 
portray or depict. 

But they might have included the following in their 
circular, and undoubtedly would, had they loved alethi- 
ology and desired to be obligingly explicit, just simply 
to have it more complete. We have gone already to 
great expense, in urging on the South to war, for if we 
did not, we well know that your people could have ar- 
bitrated or amicably adjusted the slave question. We 
did so because we knew that if your government could 
not be placed deeply in debt, we could not play you for 
suckers, like we now can. And further, we pledge our 
honor to do more on our part ; we will aid the South all 
that we possibly can without recognizing their belligerent 
rights, until the debt is large enough, to suit our pur- 
pose, and dear brethren in finance, see to it that you do 
your part). 

Do you really think that such accusations or asser- 
tions as the foregoing are mere chimerical conclusions 

221 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

arrived at by an overwrought or unhealthy imagination? 
If you do, just consult the history of this, your own 
generation, and if you are so absent minded or forgetful 
as not to remember it, there, you will find, where the 
English Government, in a court, held in a foreign country 
(Geneva), at which Caleb Gushing represented this coun- 
try in part, was publicly to her world-wide, everlasting 
disgrace, sentenced to pay a fine, or indemnity, to the 
United States Government, of $15,500,000 in gold, for 
aiding and abetting the South during the war of the 
rebellion. We hope you will not forget that again. Now, 
did they assist in creating that debt, and all others, on 
which they now live at their ease on the toil of Amer- 
icans? Again we say repeal the refunding act of 1870, 
fraudulently recorded by changing the word before for 
after, making the bonds payable only thirty years after, 
instead of any time previous to that date. Pay the debt 
and thus wipe off the slate, recording all the gigantic 
crimes of the world's history, the greatest, that con- 
tract, the United States national debt. 

That the bankers acted on the advice of the Hazzard 
circular, goes without saying. Of course, you know all 
about the exceptional clause on the back of the green- 
back, which was placed there by act of Congress Febru- 
ary 25, 1862, or just thirteen days after the second act 
authorizing their issue, and nine days after the New 
York, Philadelphia and Boston banker's convention, 
called at Washington for the purpose of purchasing per- 
fidious political poltroons, and of intimidating the gov- 
ernment by their threatening whining wail of treachery. 
Again by the purchased passage of the national bank 
act, passed in 1863, by which we pay from 4 to 7 per 
cent, interest on the bonds and an average of 12 per cent, 
more on its representative national bank notes, the repre- 
sentative of a debt, an intrinsic value money, the best 
the world ever sawed in two, not redeemable in gold, 
silver, copper, iron or arsenic, but in a worse and more 
deadly poison, that accursed debt, already purchased for 
the people, by disloyalty and dishonor, and continued 
by a cabal of craven cormorants, that they may consume, 
in confounding carousal, the creations of the over-con- 

222 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

fiding, too-complacent masses, and coUudingly consume 
the chastity of their children, and consonantly, copiously 
consume that foaming, foreign froth of Beelzebub, cham- 
pagne. Oh ! God of Israel ! To where are our spirits 
of freedom vanishing? 

How ridiculous. To see people measuring their com- 
modities of absolutely necessary intrinsic value, by 
their debts, and the reindebtedness on that debt, by the 
bankers. Away with your banks and debts. Cancel 
both, have your government issue, even to the amount of 
one representative dollar, for every dollar's worth of 
your realty and patriotism, if so much is required, as 
it can injure no one who wants to live by honest in- 
dustry. Let us kill off the drones by either compelling 
them to labor, or by consuming themselves like all other 
cannibals. They barefacedly tell us that the loud, empty- 
sounding national bank notes are the best the world ever 
saw, but they forget to add that that little world is suf- 
fering from amaurosis and ophthalmia caused by their 
nocturnal dipsomaniac debauches of degenerating des- 
pumation, and are blinded by the light of truth and 
honesty. 

Their next robbing scheme came easier for them,. as 
did all others up to date, as since his removal, they 
did not have Lincoln to contend with, and as every one 
knows to-day, whether willing to confess it or not, that 
every one of our Presidents since, with the exception of 
the short, sad-ending career of Garfield, have been as 
mere puppets in the hands of foreign and native alien 
bankers. Was not the currency contraction act of 1866 in 
strict conformity to or with English dictation, as was 
our loud-mouthed bankers' slavish obedience to it? By 
which act the people's non-interest-bearing money was 
cremated on being changed for diabolical-chaining bonds, 
bearing interest at 5 per cent., on which a counterfeit, 
extrinsic paper money was issued at an average of 12 
per cent, per annum (see national bank statistics of oyer 
10 per cent, net profits). Was this the combined action 
and accomplishment of Satan and Shylock? Or is it but 
a horrible dream? 

Then came the funding act of 1870, following the credit 

223 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

destroying act of 1869, legalizing the swapping of 
stamped pieces of metal for stamped pieces of paper, | 
for the purpose of robbing the producers out of hundreds ,j 
of millions, and increasing the purchasing power of the i- 
yellow-metal tokens of the bondsmen out of bondage, but 
busity forging more chains for the deluded, producing 
slave, who was told that the honor of the nation was at 
stake. Yes, such honor, and the stake, emits deadly, 
diabolical, fetid, sulphurous fumes which stifles patriot- 
ism and destroys noble principle so completely that we 
may any day see our princely parasites, with reasoning 
power so paralyzed, that they mope abroad, with their 
carcass adorned by what seems to be the material ele- 
ment of their brains, the metal gold, as if aping Moham- 
med in his magnetic casket, awing his disciples to further 
reverence, and whose aofish, affected swagger seems to 
contend that the fathers of the country were but trite, 
truckling dotards, and could never enter such a 400, l 
Lordly swim. Oh, shade of Paterson, the Pirate ! You 
are getting there with both feet and a cloven hoof. 

The funding act of '70, by law, which must soon be re- 
pealed, prevents the people from paying off their national 
debt. They have paid more than twice their whole debt 
already in interest, and about $750,000,000 cannot be paid 
until 1907. With our products at one-third the market 
price now, that such commodities brought when the 
debt was contracted, the debt is in reality more now, ij 
that is, it is harder to pay than it was at the close of 
the war, as the intrinsic value and cubic measures, or 
metric weight, remains the same ; while the actual meas- 
ure of the dollar, when applied to our merchantable com- 
modities, has increased at least threefold and still the 
American pope of the Shermanation army claims he can- 
not see it. Is it any wonder why that profound philos- 
opher Schopenhauer exclaims : ''The more I learn or see of 
man, the better I love dogs?" 

Then came the stealthy demonetization of silver in 
1873, another of the stupendous robberies of the Amer- 
ican people, consummated by the miserable purchase and 
sale of $500,000, for a few paltry wretches, whose base 
souls and putrid carcasses are not worth the two by six 

224 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

of the earth's most filthy mire, required soon to stay their 
plaguing stench, from corrupting the nature of com- 
mon, manly man. And the student in the dissecting room 
fears it worse than the seven plagues of Israel combined. 
Then the commodity — monetization of silver by pur- 
chase of some $2,000,000 a month, not the one hundredth 
part of the money monthly devoured by interest. 
What financial baby mud-pies, even without the excuse 
of a sugared crust. Then the purchase by money, of 
money-metal, the storage of the metal, on the metal, the 
issuance of one-half commodity paper, and the other half 
composed of (to be charitable) complete financial igno- 
rance, either half exchanged for gold at the treasury win- 
dow, while the greenb?ck plays tag with the redemption 
fund away down in the cellar. Another staggering con- 
viction of the total lack of the financial knowledge per- 
vading the ranks of our puny, putrescent politicians. 
Or is it criminal, nameless, shameless dishonesty? Let 
us utter good for evil, or as you are the judge, evil for 
good, and say it is not avaricious dishonesty, but with 
Christian-like mercy and love, let us name it plexiform, 
iconographic insanity. 

We find that not only did the national banks suborn 
Legislators direct, but used the most outrageous methods 
to bring their constituents' influence to bear on them, 
the idea leading "to such methods could only have orig- 
inated in the mind of a citizen of a Church-ridden coun- 
try like England. Here is a sample of the national bank- 
ers' circulars : "Dear Sir — It is advisable to do all in your 
power to sustain such daily and prominent weekly news- 
papers, especially the agricultural and religious press, as 
will oppose the issuing of greenback paper money, and 
that you withhold patronage or favors from all ap- 
plicants who are not willing to oppose the government 
issue of money. Let the government issue the coin, and 
the banks issue the paper money of the country, for 
then we can better protect each other. To repeal the 
law creating national banks, or to restore to circulation 
the Government issue of money, will be to provide the 
people with money, and will therefore seriously afifect 
your individual profits as banker and lender. See your 

225 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

member of Congress at once, and engage him to support 
our interest, that we may control legislation. Signed by 
the Secretary, James Buel, 147 Broadway, Room 4, New 
York." 

The religious press, eh! Those placarding mockeries 
of the religion of Jesus. Those chief expounding post- 
ers of religion-made-easy ! The blatant exponents of div- ; 
inity-cut-and-made-to-measure, who lavishly guarantee a j' 
perfect fit ! Those chief agents and expositors of the 1' 
poor man's heaven and the rich man's hell, whose cun- ' 
ning, imposing, illustrations are to awe the poor man [ 
from rebelling at Church-sanctioned robbery! Can we 
here congratulate the banks on their perspicacious choice, 
in selecting such a felicitous ally, of his black majesty? 
Or are we to be convinced that the selection was but an 
ordinary compliance with an article of the covenant of 
the triple Alliance? Did we say the religious press? Ah! 
what a powerful ally. To assist Mammon in each tower- ' 
ing robbery of the masses. To assist those gamblers 
fired bodily from the temple. What a choice ally — in 
whose putrid brain the pure teachings of Christ are 
dressed in rancid robes and sacrilegously forced through 
polluting lips, with such an enervating, hissing sound as 
to mesmerize the most magnanimous, unsuspecting, for- 
giving people on the face of the earth, the American 
masses, and thus leave them an easy prey to the wiles of 
that member of the triple alliance — the usurer. 

Let us see or quote a few words from some of the 
patriots of the war days. Hon. Thaddeus Stevens said 
in regard to the exception clause on the greenback, that, 
"It is the first victory of the money power over the coun- j 
try.'^ Again he said, "We had to yield, we did not yield 
until we found that the country -must be lost, or the 
banks gratified." The Hon. Henry Wilson said, Febru- 
ary, '62, "It is a contest between the brokers, jobbers 
and money changers on the one side, and the people of 
the United States on the other. I venture to express the 
opinion that ninety-nine of every hundred of the loyal 
people of the United States are for this legal tender 
clause." (Not the exception clause.) 

Secretary of the Treasury Sal. P. Chase, who was then 

226 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

Secretary, when the scurriliously heinous, empty-sound- 
ing national bank act passed through Congress in 1863. 
On afterwards seeking for his grievous mistake, condol- 
ence with Lincoln, the latter consolingly repeated his 
oft-repeated remark: ''Well, we cannot fight two wars 
(meaning the banks and the South) at once." Secretary 
Chase lamentably answered : ''Qh, well, I know that, Abe. 
Oh, but how I shudder for the consequences ! When I 
remember my agency in procuring the passage of the 
national bank act it was the greatest financial mistake of 
my life. It has built tip a monopoly that affects every 
interest in the country. It should be repealed. But 
before this can be accomplished the people will be ar- 
rayed on one side and the banks on the other in a con- 
test such as we have never seen in this country." 

Let us quote a few of the words of that mountain of 
natural equity and equiponderant, culminating pinnacle 
of patriotic purity, Abraham Lincoln, who, shortly before 
the close of the war wrote : "Yes, we may all congratulate 
ourselves that this cruel war is nearing its close. It has 
cost a vast amount of treasure and blood. The best 
blood of the flower of American youth has been freely 
offered upon our country's altar, that the nation mis-ht 
live. It has been indeed a trying hour for the Republic, 
but I see in the near future a crisis approaching that 
unnerves me and causes me to tremble. for the safety 
of my country. As a result of the war corporations have 
been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places 
will follow, and the money power of the country will en- 
deavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prej- 
udices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a 
few hands, and the Republic is destroyed. I feel at this 
moment more anxiety for the safety of my country than 
ever before, even in the midst of war. God grant that 
my suspicions may prove groundless." It was such 
discerning expressions really that built and decorated the 
stage for him, on which was played that eternal act 
of the Booth tragedy. Is the crisis coming? Shades 
of Chase and Lincoln, how close is it to hand? Sustain 
our courage to nobly do our part. God grant that some 
one may be left to chronicle the scene of deluded, mad- 

227 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

dened, worldly waifs, warring with deluded, wily, wanton 
wretches, to annihilation. 

The great question of the future is money against legis- 



lation. My friends, you and I shall be in our graves long | 
before that battle is ended ; and, unless our children shall \ 
have more patience and courage than saved this country, 
republican institutions will go down before moneyed cor- 
porations. Rich men die, but banks are immortal and 
railroad corporations never have any diseases. Our 
fathers, when the}^ forbade entail and provided for the \ 
distribution of estates, thought they had erected a bar- | 
rier against the money power that ruled England. They-, 
forgot that money could combine; that a moneyed cor- . 
poration is a succession of persons with a unity of pur- j 
pose. Now, as the land of England in the hands of , 
30,000 land-owning families has ruled it for six hundred ! 
years, so the corporations of America mean to govern ; I 
and, unless some power more radical than ordinary pol- j 
itics is found, will govern inevitably. The survival of j 
republican institutions here depends upon a successful 
resistance of this tendency. The only hope of any suc- 
cessful grapple with this danger lies in rousing the 
masses, whose interests lie permanently in the opposite 
direction." — Wendell Phillips. 

Then came the suspension of silver purchase (what 
fumbling, floundering of feculent financial fools), an(t 
of course the closing of the mints to its coinage. Still 
gold exchanged for silver-bills-of-lading, or silver-deposit- 
receipts or certificates. Then, oh, then, the Bonds ! Those 
diabolical links that chain us to the sale of birthright 
for pottage ! Ay, swill. 

We will not surcharge or overload the patient patriot, 
lest we should incite his over-taxed brain to a precipitant, 
but righteous revenge, by recalling to memory any more 
of the thousands of glaring incidents of the criminal 
career of the money power or national banks, by them 
committed against the weal and welfare of our nation, 
since their illegal creation; which are well known, but 
slumber deep in the minds of the noble good and true, 
on whose patience we will now, most humbly trespass, 
by imploring them not to defile the memory of the 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

fathers of their country by ever again voting, on any 
pretext v^hatsoever, for any candidate for the national 
congress, v^ho is in any way connected v^ith any national , 
or other bank. Having presumed that the honest and 
honorable American had forgotten, that such voting was 
virtually in direct opposition to the law, we thereby 
hope for pardon for having asked for such a presumptive 
favor by reminding you of the Resolution passed in the 
3d Session of Congress, which went through the United . 
States Senate on December 23d, 1793, which was signed 
by President George Washington which is as follows: 
"Any person holding any office or any stock in any 
institution in the nature of a bank, for issuing or dis- 
counting bills or notes payable to bearer or order, cannot 
be a member of the House while he holds such office 
or stock." Comment is wholly uncalled for. 

With the bright hope of creating, in the bosom of all 
true Americans, an admiration and reverence, cered by a 
spirit of forgiveness for that giant, pantamorphic, ophid- 
ian institution, the National Banker's Assn., we will give 
publicity to one of its latest messages of divine mercy, 
but now by them denied, without specific proof, and 
heavenly justice, and love to the suffering American 
people: "Dated March 12, 1893. To all National Banks. 
Dear Sir — The interests of the National Bankers require 
immediate financial legislation by Congress. Silver, sil- 
ver certificates and treasury notes must be retired and 
the national bank notes, upon a gold basis, made the 
only money. This will require the authorization of from 
$500,000,000 to $1,000,000,000 of new bonds as a basis of 
circulation. You will at once retire one-third of your 
circulation, and call in one-half of your loans. Be care- 
ful to make a money stringency felt among your patrons, 
especially among influential business men. Advocate an 
extra session of Congress for the repeal of the purchase 
clause of the Sherman law and act with the other banks 
of your city in securing a large petition to Congress for 
its unconditional . repeal. Use personal influence with 
Congressmen and particularly let your wishes be known 
to your Senators. The future life of national banks, as 
fixed and safe investments, depends upon immediate ac- 

229 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

tion, as there is an increasing sentiment in favor of 
government legal-tender notes, and silver coinage." 
Great Caesar! Talk about the patience and forbearance 
of the common mortal ; why Job, himself, w^ould not have 
even the shadow^ of a shov^ v^ith the American of to- 
day. (As we find this part of the subject exasperating 
to our nerves we deem it prudent to soon proceed to other 
parts or principles of economy and would therefore re- 
spectfully refer the reader who desires to post up on 
financial crime since 1861, to that pert, precise, clear, 
concise and clever exposition of legislative crime, the 
little book called the ''Seven Financial Conspiracies," by 
Mrs. S. E. V. Emery, Lansing, Michigan. Every true 
American should have at least one cop}^, as it costs only 
one dime, and this writer belives that everything will be 
forgiven us, just for suggesting and referring to the little 
book.) 

And then that extra session. Better treat it with 
silence. We will simply give the combined and con- 
densed answer to us, by an old North Carolina Democrat, 
and a Connecticut Republican, in response to our query, 
on March i, '93, which was: What would either, and [ 
both of you gentlemen think about, wish or say of, the 
man who would call an extra session of Congress to have 
the purchase clause of the Sherman act repealed, without 
substituting free coinage of silver in its stead? Both 
answered so spontaneously and interruptingly that we 
could not catch it all, but what we have you will find as 
plain and terse as we can give it. This is what they 
said : "Oh, we would be overjoyed at the opportunity of 
offering optative, operose orisons at his obsequies and 
overtax the orator to out-do past ossific orig-inality in 
ornating with ormula the oratory for his obituary, and 
oversee the poet to obviously obtund and outweigh it by 
an othodox, orphean ode on his oafish opuscule," We 
bade them good-bye until we should call around again, 
but to our lasting confusion be it publicly known that we 
forgot to set 'em up. 

At the past and present actions of the National Bank- 
er's Assn. there are none of us such mushheads as to be 
surprised. And why should any of us wonder at the 

230 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

exasperating, excoriating, extortionary gall of that ex- 
ceptional exacerbating, execrable excresence on the 
I exorable exemplary wealth producer, by the exalted, ex- 
! uberant, extravasating banker? For, of course, you all 
' have heard of typhoons, simoons and Kansas cyclones, 
but they aint in it with the United States Senatorial 
Sirocco that blew on October ii, 1893, and supplied suffi- 
cient National bank basis wind for four years to come ; 
for thus did the air rush, in roaring, rolling, raging, tur- 
gid, tremulous waves. Senator H. M. Teller — "These 
great banks say to a gentleman who wants to borrow 
money, 'Very good, we will lend you $10,000.' The way 
they do it is to take his note and give him credit. Not a 
dollar passes from the bank to him. They put it on their 
books and say: 'Now you are entitled to draw from us 
$10,000.' Then they put on $10,000 for another; and so 
a bank with a capital of $100,000 will have $1,000,000 of 
deposits, which means that on its $100,000 it has given 
$1,000,000 of credits, and has taken the chances that all 
the depositors will not come for their money at once. 
The people drew out of the banks the $200,000,000 that 
we hear so much of, and they took any kind of paper — 
they took any kind of money metal ; they took anything 
that they could get. In addition, in New York City they 
were compelled to take nearly $40,000,000 of clearing- 
house certificates, which were simply the notes of a com- 
mittee of banks. Senator Higgins. CWonder if that is 
big Joe ?) I ask whether that was a novel or exceptional 
condition, or one which has been in existence for a long 
time? Senator Teller — That is not a novel condition. It 
is the usual method of banking:. But if the Senator will 
look he will see that the difference between the loans 
made by these banks now and ten years before the loans 
made, say in 1883, and the loans made in 1893, he will 
be convinced that there has been an inflation, not of 
money, but of bank credit unparalleled in this or any 
other country. It was not that the system is not per- 
fectly proper and perfectly natural. Oh, shade of Lin- 
coln ! Hast thou forsaken, and thy spirit deserted, waver- 
ing Harry and windy Joe, that either should dare to 
voice, or desire, such an execrable expression, "perfectly 

231 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

proper and perfectly natural," that by a cunning wink, 
nod and turn of the wrist, that the great American people 
would be made to feel and forced to believe that they 
had a circulating medium of $6,790,000,000, or over $100 
per capita, and to reave interest from the producer on 
that amount, instead of a bank capital of $679,000,000! 
Now, do you wonder, when the calm, cool, collected, 
censor of crazy crimes, with yells, now mayhap bereft of 
reason, is heard furiously asking: Can it be possible? 
Such words were uttered in the United States Senate. 
Was there ever such wilful, woful, wretched waste of 
printers' ink to print such searing seeds of insanity? 
Printer, stop that whirling rotation of your fast-flying 
pages that I may grasp some idea from that axiom, chat- 
tered by the imp Cerberus of demonology. Or do my 
eyes deceive me? Or must we all in unison with he 
who first expressed them? Yes, each and every one of 
us. Yes, even though it be the soul-shattering verity, 
to the world truthfully proclaim : I'm mad ! I'm mad ! ! 
I'm mad ! ! ! Yes, indeed. "Perfectly natural and per- 
fectly proper." Such a far-fetched Senatorial-courtesy- 
annihilating-anathema hurled with political buffoonery and 
hypocritical nicety against the emulous, echinated, sov- 
ereign justice of true social economic science. How poet- 
ically beautiful and harmonious it would sound from an 
ecstatic, economic empiric. And how musically conson- I 
ant and aesthetically congenerous it chimes with, in its 
seductive, shattering, shimmering sheen, superbly spar- 
kling as it spins in its silvery somersault, and scarcely 
equalled or paralleled by the famous fetid-acrobatic- 
tongue-springs of truth-tumbling given in the ferine, fal- 
sifying gold acts entitled "Now you see and now you 
don't" by his Eminence Robbahjon Hisself. Oh, Harry, 
is that rotten, rancid fad Senatorial Kurtzy your plain 
hard sense of justice and manly duty's necrophagous 
Hoodoo? Here we caution: Should you suspect. Then 
Let Us Pray ! 



232 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 



PART VI. 

TAXES TARIFF. 

Lawful taxes. — Fullest publicity. — Government national taxes of 
two kinds. — Tariff maintains high prices. — Appears absurd to whom? 
— Sugar. — Argument for Tariff on necessaries. — Day's wages of 
laborer. — Bona fide American citizen. — Naturalized. — Mr. Shrewd- 
Delineator, alien tax. — Premium on American citizenship. — Labor 
power. — American labor protection. — Cheesy Chestnut. — Sugar 
bounty duty. — Our idiotic clap-trap. — Listen to the farmer. — Bounty 
on sugar beets. — Paper better than gold. — What the boy says. — Na- 
poleon prohibited sugar. — English free trade with Ireland. — Wool 
bounty duty. — Out on such rot. — Who would suffer by bounty duty? 
— Equatorial suit of full dress. — Government setting prices. — Duty 
enough too. — Interest on active capital. — Duty on lead. — Discrimina- 
tion on lead duty. — Beet factory president and beet-sugar factory 
president. — Rule of three. — The woolly question. — Woolly Hon-u-r-a- 
lulu. — Mary's little lamb. — $4 for the laborer's daily wages, $15 for 
Congressman and $137 for the boss of equal rights. — Prospector on 
the tariff. — Echo. — The miner on the tariff. — He remembers Lin- 
coln. — Hobos and holdups. — Liberty and omniparity of man. — How 
can we vote for them ?- 

Taxes must be raised or contributed in order to defray 
the expenses encumbered on the deputized government 
in the preservation of society or in the execution and 
administration of societary law, for the protection of life, 
and property, from the vandal, or he who would collect 
or reave from anyone, any realty or profit without ren- 
dering a full and actual equivalent of intrinsic worth, 
and as far as possible in human affairs the maintenance 
of adequate and commensurate security in the possession 
of liberty and the pursuit of ordinate pleasure and happi- 
ness. 

A lawful tax is an authorized levy, or subscription, laid 
and collected by the legitimately organized or established 
government of a nation, state, dominion, country, district, 
city or town. The transaction, or assessment and collec- 
tion, of which should be executed or laid and collected 
with as much publicity as possible and with the most 
scrutinizing regard for its indiscriminate distribution, to 

233 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

be assessed and levied in proportion to the amount of 
property held or owned, or the amount of revenue, in- 
come or benefits derived from society or the state, by 
each individual or corporation, in order to thereby avoid 
as much as possible the inimical danger of an unjust or 
inequitable distribution of the burden of support of either 
of said governments. 

In order the better to provide for an impartial adjust- 
ment of the amount each property holder, business man, 
income recipient, possessor of money, or other valuables, 
or elector, should bear or contribute ; a mute, reciprocal 
controller should be established in the form of a pub- 
lished tabulated alphabetical list, to be posted and kept 
exposed in a conspicuous place in a free public resort, of 
the amount of property, funds, etc., assessed to each in- 
dividual, and the separate amounts of taxes to be collect- 
ed from each. Such list to be posted in each assessors 
district as soon as the assessor shall have completed, or 
nearly so, his tax list. Said list should remain posted 
until all those taxes are paid, or until the expiration of 
the year of payment, so that all concerned can compare 
the amount of their taxes with others, and thus have 
ample time and opportunity to make complaints and for 
the correction of discrimination or abuses in the levy. 

To the foregoing publication a rather numerous and 
implacable enemy would be found in the persons of those 
who have no visible taxable property but still pose as 
people in. high standing, and those who place their prop- 
erty in their wife's, or others' name, but who continue to 
do business in their own in order the better to conspire 
against the unsuspecting, honestly inclined individual, 
and to thereby facilitate their evil design, or conquest, 
on the uninitiated. 

True, plausible objections may be raised to the forcy 
going proposition of publication by saying that the rec- 
ords are open to examination or inspection, but this is 
an intentionally dishonest excuse, for besdes the extra 
trouble and expense to the inquirer it would necessitate 
at least ten times the amount to pay for extra clerk hire 
than the cost of its publication would amount to, and the 
posting in public would require, and all this renders the 

234 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

taxpayer backward in making inquiries, as he supposes 
that it is commonly held to be none of his business. The 
question then is, Whose business is it? 

Why legislators do not compel this or similar publica- 
tion to be a requirement of the law in every state and 
county. It is to be greatly feared that it may be an- 
swered thus. That being in the swim they may get the 
benefit of an unequal distribution, but alas ! such benefits 
rarely bring blessings of peace and contentment to either 
public or private individuals, for honesty has its own cer- 
tain rewards, and were there none other of them but a 
self-approving mind or conscience this would seem at 
least one of the tellic incentives of man in all his actions, 
while temporarily halting here in his transitory sojourn 
among the other animals, for life at best is but a line of 
infinity and man, but an inconceivably small speck in 
the illimitable kingdom of matter or realms of space. 

The United States national government taxes may be 
said to be of two kinds. The one that is the so-called 
tariff is a duty, a tax, an impost, or a toll imposed pre- 
sumably at the instance, in the interest, and with the con- 
sent of the producing masses against all consuming 
classes, by the government on imported goods or mer- 
chandise on their entry into the country in opposition, 
in the markets, to home productions. Which levy is laid 
with the design to stimulate home industry by an arti- 
ficial creation of the incentive of a higher ruling price 
for commodities in the home market and the mainte- 
nance of a consequent or attendant higher ruling price on 
all goods, reluctantly purchased by foreigners, than in 
the general and natural course of events could otherwise 
with any deg-ree of certainty be maintained, with the one 
exception of increasing our circulating medium per capita 
manifold more than that now existing, and more than 
the comparative volume of money in circulation with for- 
eigners, only by either of those conditions can we main- 
tain high prices on our commodities no matter what their 
indispensable intrinsic values and no matter how wild 
or fanciful the legal, figurative, imaginary value of money 
of any kind may be. 

It may be here stated that this toll or tax enables the 

235 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

American export merchant, not laborer, to charge, main- 
tain and receive a higher general price current than 
could otherwise exist without many times increasing our 
relative volume of legal tender, for provisions or mer- 
chandise absolutely needed, by foreign countries to allay, 
avoid, divert or prevent want, hunger, destitution, and 
even famine among the poorer producing masses in over- 
crowded communities, which suffering some European 
countries are continualh^ on the verge of even in years 
of a normal yield of crops and are periodically visited 
with famines of considerable extent from crop failures ; 
which permanent and periodical conditions compel them 
to purchase breadstuffs, etc., abroad, and therefore we 
find them our unwilling customers, by their having no 
other alternative, somewhat similar, but that they labor 
under more stringent conditions to our resident of 
Dakota having to patronize the Southern cotton planter. 

If we allowed in their cheaper labor-manufactured ma- 
terial to compete with our own without the purchaser or 
consumer paying a tax or toll for his unpatriotic act of 
purchasing from a citizen of a foreign nation in prefer- 
ence to one of his own, and if this tax on foreign com- 
modities and premium of price on American wares did 
not exist the current or ruling prices of all commodities 
would then, as a self-evident proposition, rule lower, and 
we as a nation be the consequent loser, to which loss we 
would be predestined, by the removal of the tax, of the 
difference between the then existing ruling prices and 
those now created, or caused, by the changed conditions, 
and therefore lose that amount of the foreigner's pro rata 
bullion, notes or credit of exchange, com.pulsively given 
by him in exchange for our indispensable necessaries of 
life, which factors could be applied in purchasing propor- 
tionally more of his comforts or luxuries from him, or 
simply retain so much more of his bullion. 

So we see the inevitable result of the removal of the 
duty or tax would wind up in the inability of the Amer- 
ican merchant to maintain the price current, with the tax 
removed, that the imposition of the tax enabled him to 
do by the relative enhancement in price of all commod- 

236 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

ities by the fixed enhancement or additional tax price 
of one or more. 

Another of the noisily vaunted purposes of this tax 
or tariff is the definitely admitted, and the most general 
and explicit reason assigned by the expositor of protec- 
tion, who lays vociferous emphasis on the fact that the 
toll is levied for the expressed purpose of keeping up 
American labor- wages. He don't say of enabling land 
compelling the American employer to pay higher wages 
for labor than that prevailing in other countries, but pur- 
posely leaving it optional with the employer to pay any 
wages he may choose to, and then also adds, with a loud 
and cunning yell (possibly he knows no better, poor 
fellow!), and, moreover the further intention of provid- 
ing steady employment to all who may apply. 

But, now seemingly suddenly becoming exhausted from 
nervousness, superinduced by the excitement caused by 
the feeling aroused within him from pure patriotism for 
his country and labial love for the laborer, whenever the 
subject is under public discussion, the political, palaver- 
ing poltroon cunningly and advisedly drops, or cuts 
short, the subject; but we will take it up further on and 
endeavor to impartially examine his assertions and try 
to discover whether they are prompted by his patriotic 
or pecuniary interests in, or ignorance of the subject, or 
wilful knavery concerning it, or a somewhat different 
ratio of all combined. 

Calmly considering all the propositions laid down and 
all the logically laciniated reasons assigned by the elab- 
orate expounder of a protective tariff, and others, for levy- 
ing an import duty, we gradually arrive at an irrefutable 
and irrevocable conclusion, that those who conceived 
and perfected the tariff were right in their surmises as to 
its operation nationally, and that those claims laid down 
in paragraphs 491-5 inclusive, are justly borne out by the 
past and present demonstrated facts, and will ever con- 
tinue so, as long as a protective tariff exists, or is levied, 
provided that the social structure of governments and 
especially that of the United States remain the same or 
without radical change from how they are now constitut- 
ed, constructed and conducted or administered. 

237 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

To some perfidious, as well as mercenary advocates of 
free trade, some of whom we could name, and to those 
who follow the former for the reason that poodles go to 
church, and to those who, from an}^ cause, have not 
given the subject the attention and investigation it de- 
serves, and to those who perversely and blindly follow the 
blind for reasons they are incapable of defining, and are 
willing to sacrifice their own rights and the rights of 
their fellow Americans, even should their patriotic pride 
get smirched, for the gaseous, shadowy, bombastic noth- 
ingness of /'the name of party," and to all the accidental 
or self-constituted leaders of the bogus democracy, to-day 
in the lead, whose administration of the financial afifairs 
of the country bears a striking resemblance to the follow- 
ing. Just imagine a protean prototype of this govern- 
ment represented by the seven departments in the form 
of a septagonal mythical chariot, with a powerful steed 
hitched to each angle and his eminent obesity perched in 
the center on top in a revolving chair, mercilessly plying 
the whip to his prancing, cow^ering steeds, who are vainly 
endeavoring to drag this nation apart, while the millions 
of hungry and idle, but willing workers, are aimlessly, 
but with ever-increasing frenzy, passing in review, and 
now if 3^ou excuse this weak efifort at tropology, I trow 
you will have a true taurine thaumatrope that this trite 
thaumaturgus or theurgist told you about, object lesson, 
without even a tinge or trace of trepidation ; to all such of 
course the indisputable decision arrived at in par. 497 it 
would appear absurd and be, by them, unhesitatingly 
pronounced as a superlative exhibition of insolence, igno- 
rance, pedantry or egotism. Well, we will only remark 
that we have not quit the subject yet. 

In the matter of establishing proofs literal^ illustra- 
tive of the facts of the effects of a protective tariff being 
the factitious agent in creating for all marketable commodi- 
ties and concomitant or congeneric services, as also for all 
property, real estate, chattels and all potential consociates, 
an advanced current price is necessary to investigate its 
workings. 

By the casual observer it would be, no doubt, con- 
sidered superfluous in this date, and age, to offer here 

238 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

a rehearsal of all the numerous proofs adduced by 
its supporters, which are all generally understood and 
universally admitted, as fact, by even the most ardent 
opponents of protection; or to draw deductions from 
some of its features in its simplest direct workings, were 
he not reminded of the plausible supposition that this 
work may be sought i,ooo years hence for reference as 
to how the whole thing and the old thing worked ; there- 
fore lest they, who, although so far eloigned, yet our own 
direct offspring. Dod bess de tiny, tutsy wutsies, de dear 
heavenly little babies ! Yes, lest they should suffer the 
smallest iota of anxiety by being allowed to remain be- 
nighted on this subject, we hope to be pardoned in at- 
tempting to state the plain appearance and action of a 
few of its shreds in some of their open dealings. 

SUGAR. 

Sugar is one of the principal productions of the world, 
an element of which civilezed man consumes a large 
amount. For every loo tons produced in the world the 
United States produces about three tons, while we con- 
sume ten times our production or 30 tons, or per cent., of 
the world's production, or 30 tons of every 100 produced 
by the whole world, of which we import about $110,- 
000,000 worth now per annum, the old tariff on which 
would have amounted to $50,000,000 in 1893, or about 
eighty cents per capita for the millionaire or mendicant, 
which was reduced, as it should have been, as it acted in 
a most unfair and discriminate way in its operations for 
many reasons, a few of which we will offer here. 

First, it can be seen that the United States does not 
produce over 10 per cent, of its own consumption and 
therefore it cannot be rightfully classed among what is 
known as an American principal production of an ade- 
quate sufficiency for home consumption, and therefore if 
the duty was not found to be absolutely necessary for 
the support of government it should have been reduced 
to a minimum or levied only of sufficient amount to cover 
an outlay for a bounty to be paid as an incentive for its 
production at home, as well as to relatively maintain 

239 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

high prices for all other, particularly exportable, commod- 
ities; the bounty per pound to decrease as the revenue 
from duty decreased, so as to permanently maintain two 
cents difference per pound in the home and foreign 
market prices. In this way the infant industry should 
and could be stimulated until such times as the then 
fostered industry could produce sugar in sufficient quan- 
tity for home consumption at least. Then the bounty to 
be supplanted b}^ that of the import duty alone, which 
would still enable the producer of the article to pay a 
continued higher rate of wages than his foreign com- f 
petitor. Is not that plain enough? f 

Second, from the fact that sugar has long been and f 
now is considered one of the principal necessaries of life, J' 
and generally he who works hardest consumes most f 
whenever possessed of the ability to purchase it, con- [ 
sequently the common laborer paid more of such govern- 
ment, or sugar-trust tax, than the multi-millionaire, re- |! 
gardless of the unequal government expenditure in the \ 
fostering care of the life and property, etc., of the two 
individuals. The laborer being compelled to pay most 
for being guilty of individual productive exertion for the 
betterment of all society, and probably for the crime of i 
not having property for government to guard. For the j 
noisy exponent of protective principles here is a moral, I 
extra-duty for having a good appetite and no property ! 

Third, for the reason that the brightest advocates of a 
protective tariff, as well as all unpartisan thinkers, were [ 
always and are now in favor of allowing in the absolute ' 
necessaries of life, with the smallest possible duty con- | 
sistent with the best interest of the public service when- ' 
ever it is known that a sufficient amount cannot be, or is 
not produced at home, and with the exception of that 
brand of fire-eating, peccant partisans whose descrescent 
career few will mourn, and whose audiences generally are 
as shallow as themselves, for none other would listen to 
them if they could but make their exit, all are agreed 
that little direct if any benefit can be obtained by impos- 
ing an exorbitant import duty on the commodities neces- 
sary for self-sustentation, and that should a struggling 
industry be found in the production of such a commodity 

240 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

it should be fostered and protected by a bounty sufficient 
to enable it to pay American wages and thus compete 
with the imported material. 

It may be well to here note an argument put forward 
among others in support of the advisability of taxing 
necessaries not produced at home in sufficient quantity 
which we must admit contains a certain degree of con- 
sistency. The reasons given, condensed, are these: That 
it would provide the laborer a proportionate amount of 
justice in demanding a proportionate increased amount 
of wages on account of the per-consequent increased cost 
of living, which increased wages and cost of living would 
necessitate an increased amount of an active circulating 
medium, and a consequent increased market value of all 
property, with a corresponding increased government 
expenditure for general expenses, necessary public im- 
provements, etc., an increased standing among the na- 
tions of the world, as well as the relatively increased 
cost-price on our goods to the foreign, reluctantly-com- 
pelled purchaser. There watchword seems to be increase 
and no progress. 

Now, as the foregoing reasons assigned may be said to 
be, and to us appears, slightly possessed of, adorned or 
decked with a small degree of connotative dubiety, since 
all of the articles of luxury, convenience or comfort that 
may, or may not, be produced at home, together with all 
the home, fully competitive, slightly or non-protected 
necessaries of life provide a field ample enougjfi, or of 
sufficient extent in themselves to admit of revenue opera- 
tions, to be conducted on a diversiform scale, to agree or 
act in just harmony with the occupations, amount of 
revenues and privileges, and diverse possessions, or prop-, 
erty holdings of all the parties in interest; in a manner 
and number comprehensive and capable of covering all 
of the several points which might afford discussion, and 
of yielding revenue sufficient so that a deficit of $7,000,000 
or $8,000,000 per month could not easily occur, as is the 
case at this writing; as also to provide the laborer with 
sufficient justifiable grounds for a reasonable and equit- 
able demand for a proportionate rate of wages in ac- 
cordance with the increased cost of living. 

241 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

I 

A fair estimate of a laborer's wages would be, for each • 

day's labor, a sufficient amount to provide a family of | 

five persons with the necessaries of life and some such j 

comforts as cleanliness, reasonable amount of amuse- I 

ment, a little music (besides the factory whistle), some I 

literature, etc. The day's labor to consist of six, eight or ■] 

ten hours, according to the constancy and amount of i 

physical and mental force required in the operation, and \ 

with due regard for sanitary or deleterious conditions or | 

surroundings, for such day's labor, in consideration for , 

the privileges now enjoyed, of the easy access of the | 

benefits to be derived from a sudden change of climate, as j 

for instance, running over to cooler Canada when the i 

heat of excitement here becomes so intense as to explode ( 

the banks and others of like nature, solely due to recent i 
or modern inventions of an inestimable value although 

not figured in the profit and loss account as yet, and of i 
which the sedulous class can rarely avail themselves of, 

and in consideration of other things best left unsaid in i 
the interest of a class steadily increasing, we consider 
under all conditions that $4 per day is a fair day's wages 

in this stage of the present century, neither too large nor i 

too small, in our opinion for a bona fide American citizen, j 

I 

BONA FIDE CITIZEN, NATIVE. j 

i: 

Our estimation of, or understanding of what constitutes 

the latter individual, may be summed up in the following \- 

few words : Any native-born (naturalized citizen, par. j 

511) individual arriving at the age of responsibility, de- ' 

fined by the law, who with consistency and continuity i- 

-subscribes to, and is governed in all of their political \ 

and social actions, by all of the philosophical contextures ^' 

of that article known as the Constitution of the United j^ 

States (until another may be devised and perfected), and f 

all statutory laws not in conflict therewith, and stand j 

ever ready to defend the same by a forfeit of all their I 

possessions when necessary, and their life whenever called I 

on, and never try to imitate, propagate or propagand \. 
social ideas or sophistries antagonistic or foreign to re- 
publican alethiology or divine reality; all of this not 

242 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

only in their public professions or expressions, but in 
both public or private or secret actions and literal and 
social engagements. The unceasingly faithful intentions 
and voluntary strict observance of those conditions con- 
stitute a bonafide American citizen. Please point out the 
faults in that definition whenever you can? We will 
feel everlastingly indebted to you for having charitably 
and fraternally set us lucently right. 

The strict observance of such conditions and duties 
would prohibit anyone from joining or becoming or re- 
maining a member of any secret society, the tenets or 
dogmatic teachings or injunctions of which would tend 
in any way to curtail or abridge the rights, privileges or 
immunities guaranteed to all by the Constitution, which 
if found in error amend it, or which would work any 
hardship, duress, or bring or spread any discrepant dis- 
dain on anyone on account of the religion of any citizen 
of the United States, which religion or religions are tol- 
erated by the Constitution of the United States (not 
either England's, Turkey's or Russia, but this, the United 
States Constitution). 

BONA FIDE CITIZEN, N.\TI"RALIZED. 

Therefore should anyone become a member of any 
such order or politico-religio society, either public or 
secret, thereby constitute themselves a deluding and 
bellicose follower of the Constitution, and a consequent 
deceptive political enemy of our republican institution, 
then on joining the same they immediately and logically 
cease being a bonafide American citizen. The act of 
becoming and remaining a member of such a society is 
sufficient cause in itself for their disfranchisement with- 
out further formality, such disfranchisement to entail 
the loss of all the rights and privileges of citizenship and 
allowing no benefits except those allowed all aliens. 

The naturalized, bona fide American citizen is derived 
from any foreign-born individual, who, being discon- 
tented with their social surroundings, commercial stand- 
ing, future prospects, or other causes, resolves to cast 
their lot for life in the United States and become one of 

243 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

its citizens through due process of qualifications stipulat- 
ed by law, and comes to this country for that express pur- 
pose and complies with the prescribed duties and exac- 
tions laid down to govern such during their term of 
probation, and who sincerely subscribes to all the condi- 
tions laid down in par. 508, and who like unto native- 
born bona fide citizens shall always promote American 
interests independent of, and to the exclusion of, all 
others whenever possible. A full and true compliance 
with all those conditions by any normal Caucasian human 
being constitute them a bona fide American citizen. 

Before leaving this contingent part of the subject we 
will ask Mr. Shrewd Delineator, No. i, combine Pro- 
tective Benefit St., Cit)^ of Labor, Does not an opportune 
time now present itself and has done so for years to 
you and your co-dissemblers or coadjutors to show your 
genuine appreciation of American laborers, and get your- 
self mixed up in greater whirling confusion and make 
yourself more ridiculous if possible by dabbling in social 
problems that are wholly beyond your conception, or 
that, by sophisms you try to belie or pervert, and possi- 
bly by accident to make a practical distinction and labor 
protection between bonafide American and alien labor, 
by procuring the enactment of laws providing for the 
collection of a tax from employers of alien labor? Such 
alien labor to include all those who are not American 
citizens, or who ma}^ be undergoing their probationary 
period or term, and all those who from any cause may, 
in the operations of the law, become disfranchised. 

The amount of tax to be imposed to be $1 per diem, 
to be paid at the end of each month, by the employer of I 
such labor, for each individual alien employee, that he | 
may have had in his employ during the month, the tax j 
to be paid directly to the collector of direct graduated 
income tax. On the basis of four dollars per day for , 
the American laborer there would be yet left to the alien j 
more than 100 per cent., more than he could obtain for 1 
similar services in the country which he voluntarily ' 
exiled himself from, or was by an interest-bearing finan- | 
cial system compulsively expelled, for which European j 
existing conditions the American laborer was wholly I 

244 ' , 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

blameless. Then what should be done with this alien 
tax? 

This tax should be fully, or entirely, applied as a part 
of government expenditures for national public improve- 
ments, and when the sum of $500 would be thus paid into 
the treasury, for which the alien would hold receipts, 
and then at that time or after on the alien satisfactorily 
passing an educational examination in the American lan- 
guage and fundamental principles of the social structure 
and republican alethiology of our institutions, to be al- 
lowed to full citizenship and not before, and then to re- 
ceive a certificate entitling him to one year's employment 
on public improvements at full wages, in order to enable 
him to accumulate the $500 contributed for the new com- 
mon benefit of his new social family or society. The 
alien on arriving who might be able to pay the $500 into 
the public fund and satisfactorily, as the other, pass or 
qualify by educational examination, to be admitted like- 
wise to citizenship. 

ASSOCIATION. 

This would not only set a premium on American citi- 
zenship but would tend to act as an incentive to a greater 
appreciation of such indisputable social blessings by 
those, who for the past thirty years, have so shamelessly 
and unpardonably abused and desecrated them ; but it 
would act as a most powerful agent in forcing European 
governments to seek, or devise, a more equitable financial 
system than the present accursed, individual-interest- 
bearing-money system now in existence, by which the 
laborer is actually and palpably robbed; and a favored 
few enabled to procure natural productions without ef- 
fort, or the expenditure of human labor power, which 
is the most sublimely supreme power in Nature, and as 
imperishable as Nature itself, while Nature wills regenera- 
tion possible ; for not only does labor power consist of a 
similar force as all other natural forces, namely, germina- 
tion, dynamic force, resisting force, affinity or accumula- 
tive force, changing force, etc., but which is, and must 
act in conjunction with, a soul, to be fruitful, to which 

245 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

soul all other forces of Nature are, and must be, sub- 
servient ever, for without this soul-power (not the bogus 
Church soul) all other natural productions, or life-sus- 
taining forces, except inert matter, sunlight, air and 
water, and all animals that might procure a precarious 
and carnivorous existence, would now sweal, from the 
face of the earth as snow beneath a midsummer sun, as 
would also all artificially conjured and perverted agencies 
of machinating man's imagination, or the creation, with- 
. out physical effort and post-perversion of the crafty soul, 
unwilling to sustain the body by guiding physical action, 
but prefers to loll in luxury on the sole contrivances of 
kindred wayward souls, or in other words, royally revel 
in sweepstakes by its own cunning and on the shape of 
its own fastidious casket, through that savage devised 
agent, money, for which on earth there is no basis, in an 
abstract sense, except the common soul of the whole com- 
munity, which renders it common, public, community 
property ; therefore essentially unproductive, although 
perverted by the law to beget that Satanically intuitive 
bastard of philosophism on social equity. Interest, for 
the existence of which the only excuse offered is that 
nobly despised ancient fad — of those cancerous ulcers 
on the social body, breeding, as in a hotbed of virtue's 
sororicides, vice, crime, immorality; class distinction and 
baseless, empty pride, generally known by the glimmer- 
ing euphuism of mammoth social associations, such as 
those great storehouses of fabulous wealth and abject 
squalor, dazzling luxury and rifting destitution with 
their church steeples, mocking, factory stacks, vesper- 
bells, mimicing workshop whistles, and their numerous 
peddling, huckstering stalls for other's products, and 
idiotic gew-gaws and cretinic baubles! Such known 
vulgarly as New York, Esq., the father-in-law of national 
villainy ; obsolete, hollow-sounding Boston with its effem- 
inate, corset-trimmed, eye-glassed dudes; and poor old 
sleepy Philadelphia with its would-be aristocratic rag- 
pickers, flippantly flaunting its get-rich-quick schemes, 
etc., etc. And such association! What a desecration of 
the power of speech! That abominably apathetic con- 
glutination of self-love, dog-idolatry and miisanthropy, 

2a6 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

composed of human paupers and their princely parasites ! 
Who dares to again call it human or social association? 
Or liken it to that soulful, heavenly association of the 
family circle, which fully satiates the desire of all men 
true to Nature's soul, of which theirs is but a speck, 
which inflames the mind with such heat and light to 
enable it to soar to the realms of lofty thoughts and 
noble deeds, and on descending seeks but the shadow of 
social association for his groundwork, to display his 
charitable justice in promoting the universal brotherhood 
of man. You who would follow holy Nature's prompt- 
ings hinder him not ! By wiping out, and from the 
photographic agent of his will, money, that social cancer 
interest. 

Indeed it is high time, apropos of the alien tax, that 
American interests should be protected in the fullest 
sense that the word implies. As it would do no injury 
to the alien but would inevitably result in forcing his 
government to vanish from the earth to a forgotten grave 
in the buried past, or otherwise allow him more of the 
just fruits of his labor by abolishing interest and its 
concomitant apish, divine-right tyrants of soulless greed, 
would then be compelled to share with their brethren 
in Christ and Nature, some of the fostering care, ad- 
miration and love now bestowed on poodle dogs or 
hounds of the chase, kept for the alternating, fiendishly 
brutal^ amusement of chasing to death the innocent hare, 
when not engaged in the more edifying pastime of driv- 
ing the bond-chain-harnessed slave to a premature grave.. 
Yes, then they would be compelled to share the shel- 
ter of the dog-kennel with the homeless babe, or grand- 
mother, crowded out from that vengeance-roaring monu- 
ment to departed equity, the poorhouse, who, as yet, 
might not be allowed to rest in sleep, their weary, gaunt, 
hollow-eyed, heart-deadened frame and hunger-weakened, 
totterins: brain, on the marble-diamond floor of the House 
of the Rich man's God. 

In conforming your future actions to the perfecting 
of the above suggestions for the betterment of the Amer- 
ican laborer you would be propagating your initial legis- 
lation, bearing in any way directly in faA^or of the toiling 

247 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

masses during the last thirty years of which we have 
cognizance, which fact you must be occasionally re- 
minded of in future. As all progressive measures must 
be proved by experiments now such a law could be passed 
in forty-eight hours without transubstantiating it into a 
musty chestnut, and it could be repealed whenever proved 
to work an unjust hardship to the human family. But we 
are aware of the unreasonableness of asking you to en- 
gage with all your might for the consummation of the 
foreg-oing suggestions should you encounter the opposi- 
tion of your last thirty years perfidious, ungrateful, sour- 
souled god and master. Capital; for you that awe-inspir- 
ing demon, yet but truly composed of nothing more 
dangerous or harmful than the ignominiously unjust ag- 
gregation or accumulation of the fruits of unrequited, 
honest labor. Such made possible only by the base, 
partial and vicious laws enacted for the past thirty 
years in favor of the insolent and inhuman monopolist 
and usurer, which read more like the vaporings of a 
vapid idiot than the wise, deliberate, impartial con- 
clusions concentrated into financial law of economic 
statesmen. 

As to the argumentative allegations given elsewhere, 
and the partly suggestive answer following, we will leave 
the question undecided for the good and sufficient 
reason that we are prompted to do so simply by our 
naturally characteristic feelings of pity, mingled, with 
appreciation and magnanimity for both the democrat and 
republican parties and also profound admiration for the 
able public discussion given to the questions which their 
erudite orators designate as being of nationally vital 
importance. Therefore lest those macrotus, multilo- 
quent mentors should momentarily sufifer from a dearth 
of subjects we hereby respectfully present our Bachelor's 
mite of a (we hope to be pardoned for christening it), 
Cheesy Chestnut. Yes, and why not? Chestnut has it 
not been almost the sole right of party existence, as they 
lovingly agree, but pretend to spat, yet swap spits on 
finance, and it is also even their ivory chased toothpick 
for thirty years at least, and were the average politicians 
possessed of the slightest degree of sensitiveness or 

248 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

pride the crimson life-fluid would mantle their brow as 
with a scarlet sin-stained robe at the mere mention of 
that old, aged, ancient Chestnut, Tariff. 

The law, which provides a bounty for sugar for a term 
of years, is now about to be amended so as to lessen the 
bounty allowed and also the term of years. On the 
strength of the passage of this bounty law great impetus 
was given the sugar industry (see report of Secretary of 
Agriculture, 1893, if you doubt), as was also by a number of 
individuals and corporations entering the business of the 
production of sugar. This, of course, necessitated a large 
investment of capital, energy and attention, allured by the 
understanding that the law would be in operation for 
fourteen years, and those who enteerd the business made 
their calculations accordingly, as also their investments. 
Now, should the proposed amended law go into effect, is 
there not a hardship caused to, or worked on, the in- 
vestor? But who is going to recompense him (possibly 
the Demi party would give him a P. O. without a handle), 
for the depreciation in his investment. Or must he suffer 
for the good of all society from whom he receives all 
benefits (excluding supernatural), or must he suffer for 
the material benefit of his European neighbor from whom 
all American curses flow, and are fished out on the wing 
with a Skutch berrel, or a lame-demi-john for a shot- 
gun? The latter is the intention in order to shoot down 
the soaring, ruling price so that the foreign prince may 
purchase provisions cheaper to stall-feed his harlots, 
hounds and other dogs. 

But we suppose that the sugar-man will be recom- 
pensed by the same outfit and in the same time and 
manner (if not by American paper money then by Roths- 
childs in his will), as a silver-man will be reimbursed 
by for the depreciation of his mine and consociate mining 
property to the amount of $200,000,000, by the repeal 
of the act providing for the monthly purchase of silver ; 
and also the same party or agent who is going to re-es- 
tablish the previously prevailing market value of all 
American commodities, the decrease in which is incal- 
culable, but may be set down with safety at from $25,- 
000,000,000 to $30,000,000,000. 

249 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

Do all those individuals have to suffer in order to 
lower the price of all commodities and provide them 
cheaper to our common enemy our English cozenic 
cousins, simply because some churlish, obese, demo- 
cratic gawk might have got an Ernest Seyd American 
— $ — Pie or an English — £ — Cake? Or better still, it 
might be possible that a few of our traitorous time- 
servers might, with treacherous turpitude, share in a 
second and transcending Ernest Seyd wedding cake pro- 
cured expressly for the big feast for mammon at the mar- 
riage of American, Widespread Destitution and Miss 
National Disgrace ! It .would seem that the latter would 
be the naturally bristling paradigm of the paradoxical 
politician of to-day. 

The attention of Mr. D., whose acquaintance we formed 
elsewhere, is called to the following, concerning the sugar 
bounty law enacted by the republican party. There is 
two cents per pound now paid, 1893, as a premium or 
bounty on American produced sugar. Let us see if it is 
paid out as it should be in order to stimulate the indus- j 
try, without any discrimination. We say certainly not ! 
The democratic organs surpass with supreme swagger 
the most sudatory or sweltering efforts to their similarly 
strumming, discordant opponents' pianos, unsimilar only 
in proclaiming to the patient world, the thermal throes 
that they endure when pondering on the injustice done 
the farmer through the evils of a tariff or bounty. The 
republican screeching-piano-press point with pride to 
the bounty and say in effect : Behold ! Our Action. See 
for yourself the interest we take in industry or labor of 
all kinds, without distinction. Now, if there was no 
pessimist to indulge in critical clap-trap or the vaporing 
rot of an idiotic malcontent, like us, it might have a 
soothing, quieting influence on universal discontent. But 
hold on Partner ! Listen to the farmer a moment. 

He says that when the republicans were framing that 
law that they lost all recollection of the farmer, for the 
records bear no evidence that they were not at perfect 
liberty to give one-half of that bounty to the farmer, 
which would allow him $2 per ton for his beets, and pro- 
portionately to the cane raiser, which beets was the 

250 



..._j 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

farmer's finished product, and this $2 per ton would leave 
him in pretty fair circumstances to drive a live and let 
live bargain v^ith the sugar-factory capitalist, who could 
have got, yet, nearly one and one-fourth cents per pound 
out of the two cents per pound bounty, for one ton of 
beets will average over 235 of sugar, the beets are gener- 
ally sold at the factory for $5 per ton, so that the sugar 
capitalist, on account of his sweetness and dandy shape, 
really gets his beets for nothing, and there is more capital 
and labor employed in producing the beets than in the 
establishment of the factory and its operation. Let us 
look at the proof for this last assertion, taken from the 
average report of six beet-sugar factories. Take 134 farm- 
ers putting in each rotation crops of ten acres of beets, with 
an average of fifteen tons, or 1,334 acres, producing 20,000 
tons. Capital invested in each ten acres, horses, wagons, 
buildings,, plows, etc., etc., average $1,800, or a total of 
$250,000. We will, in order to simplify it, not allow 
interest for money invested in farms or factory, nor sal- 
aries for the bon-bon-factory president, or his son-in-law 
expert accounting commuter, nor for the beet-factory 
president, or farming-expert actuary, and to average day's 
wages at $2 per day. 

Plowing, subsoiling and preparing for planting. Per acre % 5.00 

Cost of seed $2.25, planting SI. 75, hoeing and 

thinning 16.00 " 10.00 

Cultivating with horse hoe five times " 5.00 

Topping and harvesting ' * 16.00 

Average 2 mile, hauling to factory 75 cents per 

ton, or total cost per acre 15.00 

$51. ( 
Total cost per ton 15) $3.40 

Average price per ton at factory $5.00 5.00 

" profit " for farmer , $1.60 



Factory, average capacity in 3 months, of 20,000 tons of beets. 
Capital invested less than $200,000, 

Total receipts per ton of beets, or 280 of sugar at 4^ cents $11.90 

Syrup molasses and pulp 1 00 

$13.00 

Salaries, average $1, per ton of beets, or $20,000, or 28 per 
more than all the labor of the factory, but not reckoned 
herein, 

251 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

Average cost of beets per ton delivered $5.00 

' * " labor per ton of beets .72 

" coal " " 63 

Miscelaneous, lime, sacks, barrels, etc .98 

Total cost of manufacture 7.88 

' ' factory price 13.00 

" profit per ton beets |5.67 

Or $5.67 factory profit per ton of beets, or over three and 
one-half times the $1.60, or farmer's profit, without the 
bounty. With a bounty of two cents per pound on 280 
pounds of sugar, or $5.60 and $5.67, factory profit $11.27, 
or over seven times the farmer's $1.60 profit. If the 
factory had received one and two-seventh cents per 
pound on the sugar as a bounty this would leave the 
farmer $2 per ton on the beets, which would enable him 
to pay $4 per day for labor and leave — if the human labor 
cost $1.80 per ton on the farm, or two and one-half times 
the amount of labor in the factory — a profit of twenty 
cents more or $1.80 per ton beets, and still leave the 
factory five and three-twentieth times the profit of the 
farmer, or a total of $9.27 per ton. Now, is this the 
reason why you hear the journalistic-hoosier-hobo, of the 
patent-inside-brains of the hedging-hebdomadal-harrier so 
loudiy barking, chattering and jabbering with incessant 
repetition, the bribed-bulletin (editorial) of his urban 
babbling blustering bubbling brother-bum, about the 
sanctity of Capital (the aggregated legal robbings from 
righteous labor), that it must be reverenced on its reav- 
ing mission, that it must not only be coaxed and courted, 
bonds and bonus given, but the neck must be oiled and 
the knee greased, to be ever ready with sanctimonious 
bow and genuflexion at the appearance or approach of 
the gold-gorgon god, so that if his titular party is suc- 
cessful he may get the county-printing prize? And 
should the unfortunate city or country editor possess the 
slightest spark of light of true social science and tiniest 
atom of purest patriotism and have the daring to express 
it, by saying the farmer is as well entitled to borrow from 
government for the exploitation of farm or factory as the 
alien banker, then the hobo hoarsely howls, hollos and 
heralds him as a calamity-howler, and placards and os- 

252 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

tracises him as an anarchist ! Simply because this would 
allow the farmer $12.87 profit per ton and if he paid 
$6 per day for labor in field and factory he would still 
have left $5.23 per ton profit, or three and one-fourth 
times the $1.60 he now has or receives. Oh, what beauti- 
ful Demi-Rep. consistency. ! Is this the kind of equitable 
laws you enact for the benefit of labor? Indeed it is 
rather difficult to ferret out an excuse, even from the 
fertile brain of the fulgent politician, for his formal, 
flagrant forgetfulness of the farmer, and he finds himself 
forced for excuse to rely on the chief tenet of the practical 
faith of the politician, so that he may retain the favor 
of the galling gods that forbids the placing of the 
plebian on the same plane with his perversive, patrician 
patron. 

As the present tariff bill reported to the lower house 
by that admiringly bewildered inmate, or wingless-bat, 
crawling around, that fusty colossean cradle, nursery, in- 
valid hospital, home of senescense, church and insane 
asylum of social sophistry, whose superannuated mopes, 
from the ancient portholes of its bastion, with satanic, 
phrenetic joy and senile grin, mock the true philosophers 
of alethiology and equity on their slow but certain jour- 
ney to the goal of progressive perfection ! Yes, that 
cote of Colligated Elenchus ! The College. Bookworm 
Wilson as chorister, accompanied by the croaking chord 
of a coterie of crossroads' chanticleers, makes no provision 
for this $2 per ton on beets or its equivalent on sugar 
cane. 

The farmer, with genuine regret, at last intuitivel}^ 
becomes aware of the unholy, treasonable union of the 
leading politicians of both old parties, with capital, for 
the purpose of the more efficacious exploitation of the 
farmer, who, profoundly pondering on this portentious 
pact, resolves henceforth to preclude from all partition of 
his electoral patronage, which he will now prize as a piv- 
otal plenipotence, and thereby prevent the predaceous 
politicians from participating in any more perfidious, 
political, poltroonish, prefigurations. And as he proceeds 
with his prevalent placidity, plodding after his primary 
plough, he gently, thought sarcastically murmurs, "Well, 

253 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

I thought that when that quintal of blubber, myriagram 
of bones, ton of blustering bullheadedness and milligram 
of brains, with its acephalous co-essential, collated au- 
tomatons, were winding out winsome wishes for the weal 
of the farmer, that they were weaving them from wily, 
woful warp and woof, spun from wasteful wind, and were 
but forcing gas through their stovepipes. Exit farmer. 

SUGAR BOUNTY. 

Well, should the bounty on sugar be distributed or 
applied without discrimination, with a fair and equitable 
share for both separate branches of the industry or depart- 
ments of labor- necessary for its production, that is, the 
farming department and the factory department, the in- 
dustry would be certain to receive an im.petus equalled 
only in its acceleration by a Kansas cyclone, for then 
the plebian would promptly prove his pride in the then 
practical premium and proud prominence given to pre- 
dominating labor. Certain it is that flimsy, whimsical, 
groundless objections would be made to such a proposi- 
tion, one such would undoubtedly be this: 

That capital might not be satisfied with the proposed 
allotment or division of the bounty and might hesitate to 
embark in the enterprise. Certainly it might hesitate, and 
will, just so long as he who runs may read with cer- 
tainty that, by the giving of a bribe he can have legisla- 
tion framed to order to exactly fit any particular case in 
point, and it will be so until he is forced to distinctly 
understand that all laws in futvire must be made bearing 
equal benefits to all, just so long will he hesitate in such 
cases, and just so long will shallow-minded pessimists 
offer such puerile, unpatriotic objections. 

When, or if, capital hesitates, then, why not the gov- 
ernment issue or loan the farmers the required amount 
necessary to erect a factory in a favorable locality, on 
the giving of a good and sufficient bond, such as is now 
required in an internal revenue or other transaction? 
Oh, the cozenic cynic cries, that's Sub-Treasury doctrine ! 
Well, suppose it is? You snivellino- spray of a para- 
sitical incubus ! You illegitimate offshoot of the illicit 

254 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

cohabitation of politics and piracy ! You vicious votary 
of those vampires and vultures, the bankers and boodlers! 
Have you got any reasonable argument to put forward 
why it is the farmer should not be loaned money by the 
Government that he creates to do so, as well as, or in 
preference to, that insolent, intolerant, idle, irisated mass 
of confused philosophism, of which the actual living 
illustration is the banker, of which you may be the lar- 
vated, leech-like lackey? If you can find any reason why, 
which is founded on justice and equality for individuals 
and pure, patriotic love of country, then, we will calmly, 
coolly and considerately discuss it with you, although we 
be certain to thereby incur the censure and displeasure of 
our friends by transgressing their injunction to avoid any 
communication whatsoever with evil companions. 

The money given or loaned to the banker at i per cent, 
commission, interest, that in loaning it for circulation he 
may collect a toll or tax from the industrious public at 
least twelve times the amount that government charges 
him for his basis of windy credit, all of which money 
rightfully belongs in common to the people as their me- 
dium of exchange and is their pieces-of-evidence or part 
representatives of the collective wealth and worth of 
the nation and its whole people, and no one, other than 
the delegates or organized public government, has the 
constitutional right to issue money, regulate its volume 
or charge a tax for the use thereof, Hamilton and other 
sophists to the contrary notwithstanding. We are told 
that this money is issued on bonds made of paper; it 
matters not if they were red-hot, flesh-burning steel 
chains, forged and handturned by Hooknose Rothschilds 
himself, 99 per cent, of the people demand and impera- 
tively order that no more bonds, nor chains, nor fetters, 
be either moulded, or forged, or delicately painted with 
blood-colored ink — no more for ever! 

We are also told that those bonds are better than gold. 
How is that? Paper better than gold! Come to think 
of it, partner, think you are right ! Shake ! The reason 
being the wealth behind them ! Well, that is the wealth 
we will put behind our paper money. But bonds are at 
a premium over gold because they bear interest. Well, to 
• - 255 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

keep our paper money from going to a premium and 
render them, if possible, still more stable, they must be 
non-interest bearing. We are also told that the banker 
buys these bonds made of paper with his gold, and that 
we ought to thank him. Well, heaven bless him and 
convert him to labor for a living, like all honest people 
should do, mingle the sweat of their brow with the heav- 
enly rain to assist in maturing the products of nature. 
Are those bonds not based in the main on the moral, 
intellectual and physical worth of all our people (except 
native born aliens), on all our accumulated property, as 
well as on the potential wealth of our lands, mines, woods, 
rivers, lakes, seacoast, etc. ? Then why not issue and 
circulate money on the strength of all that incalculable 
wealth, the same as you issue money on the indebtedness 
of the possessors of that wealth? The distinction that 
the advocates of the money power endeavor to confuse 
the unthinking mind with here, will not admit of the 
fabrication of the most gauzy, material difference. Their 
advocacy of bonds being because they yield an increase 
or profit robbed from labor, without their effort, but 
through the agency of a purchased, conniving govern- 
ment. 

There is scarcely a boy of fifteen now attending our 
public schools but who knows that there extends an iso- 
thermal belt from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific in 
length, and in breadth varies from the 46th parallel of 
latitude to the 40th, in places existing the full distance 
between, which is admirably adapted for beet culture. 
(For sake of more simple illustration in computing the 
possibilities of the culture or production of sugar we 
will leave out the sugar cane.) The boy also knoAvs 
that 2,000,000 acres grown to beets would produce over 
twenty tons, but take ten tons of beets to the acre, and 
average one and one-third tons of sugar to the acre, or a 
total of 2,666,000 tons of sugar, besides the syrup. The 
bo}^ also knows that such industry would give employ- 
ment to near 250,000 men for six or seven months of 
the year, in the sugar and other related industries, whose 
commodities would be necessary for its production, such 
as fuel, etc. 

256 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

The boy is aware of the fact that the above amount 
I would nearly supply the present home consumption and 
I that 7,000,000 acres of beets would produce as much 
j sugar as all the sugar now produced in the world, and 
! that this 7,000,000 acres is but a small fraction of our 
I territory adapted to beet culture. And the boy knows 
I that nothing stands in the way of its realization except 
; the question of a fixed, certain and permanent protection 
j and encouragement for the industry, which it ought to 
j have, and must have, in order to pay the wages right- 
j fully 'demanded by American workmen, which wages 
j was, and is, always the paramount question with them 
! who produce all wealth, the laborers, which politicians 
I can never evade, however constant and futile their at- 
I tempts to ignore. 

! By the way, the boys says, "he read but forgets whether 
it was in his first reader or not, but somewhere about 
Napoleon; they said he is dead now, but this happened 
'when he was not dead,' that 'he not only gave a bounty 
to beet sugar producers, but, in order to encourage it the 
more, still further prohibited the importation of foreign 
sugar' " ; and he says also that "he thinks that it was in 
the same profound, philosophical work that he read 
where that in England once it was held by the people 
to be a very unpatriotic and disgraceful act for a citi- 
zen of that ever-intermeddling island to purchase or 
wear any production or fabric manufacturr^d abroad, 
when a fair substitute could be procured of strictly Eng- 
lish production, and that this was her policy until she 
found it imperative, by all means and methods, both 
doubtful, deceptive and dark, to increase her population. 
One of those purposes was to turn the little island 
into a factory, so as to manufacture for the then small 
commercial world and receive in return breads^ufi's and 
other material, in a partly unfinished or crude state ; this 
was done in order to always have human ma-erial hand}^ 
for her volunteer army; for if she endeavored to recruit 
it by conscription, on account of her disai^ected sub- 
jects, and of her very small territory and proportionally 
large seacoast, her little island would become compara- 
tively depopulated in a short time, and as a nation would 

257 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

vanish from our atlases, or might become a summer gar- 
den for some prima donna, who could sing to the lone- 
some, wild waves, or for some European actress, who 
could hoe-down the pas-du-ventre, or a hide-and-seek 
playground for some Prince — Countess — Coronna. 

All this led from the former national spirit to the 
necessary change from protection to free trade, so that 
her intermeddling, legal tender insolence in her neigh- 
bors' affairs should be kept at par. No later than yes- 
terday she gave free trade to her chief support, except 
India — that is, Ireland. The title of the bill as it 'passed 
in the House of Parliament, was : Bill No. oo. To Estab- 
lish Free Trade with Ireland, in All Commodities Known 
as Venomous Reptiles Namely, Snakes, Poisonous Toads 
and Irish Recruits for India. 

The boy wishes me to gently intimate that, owing to 
the large deficiency in the supply of sugar produced at 
home, that we are compelled to give in exchange for the 
required amount the assured average wheat crop of 12,- 
000,000 acres, about one-half of which would have sup- 
plied the world in sugar if grown to sugar beets, and all 
of it our most fertile land, and one-sixth of it, or 2,000,- 
000 acres, would have sufficed for our total consumption 
of sugar, and the boy says he thinks that we ought to 
heed his advice and go into sugar beet cultivation by 
the wholesale something like people who understood 
their own affairs at least ; we think that the boy's advice 
should be taken, even if we had to strain a point or two 
in so doing, for, as he naively remarks, "then we w-utld 
save the cash amount as a nation of the 8,000,000 acres 
of wheat yield, and then we could spend all day Sunday 
playing craps with it; or, oh, dear me! would not that 
8,000,000 acres of fine land made a nice, level park or field 
to play football in" ! It is to be hoped that the remarks 
of the boy will be seen and heard of by many of more 
mature years, so that they will stop to consider and 
think for themselves, and not allow the ring-ridden politi- 
cal convention to dictate or cut out for them their future 
misnamed statesmen, who generally seek your suffrage 
only for their personal advancement, instead of you seek- 
ing them for the advantage of all; the great majority 

258 



I 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

of such suffrage-begging states-prison-men belong to 
either of the two classes known as bulldozing blockheads 
or nascent or natural knaves. The remarks of the boy 
are not only lost on them, but would only receive a 
haughty sneer, for such as they always meet with mock- 
ery and mimicry all lofty thought, no matter from what 
mind it may emanate, and noble actions, no matter who 
may be impelled to them from pure, patriotic and price- 
less philanthropy. 

WOOL. 

Wool is a production of which last year we produced 
$65,000,000 worth and imported about $27,000,000 worth. 
We have 50,000,000 sheep, and nearly 2,000,000 people 
connected with the industry. In the year 1893 the duty 
was as high as eleven or twelve cents on some quali- 
ties of unwashed, and so on in proportion, according to 
grade, some higher and some lower. Now, who is going 
to reimburse, say, he who has invested recently in the 
sheep and wool industry, under the protection oi the tar- 
iff, for the certain loss in his investment, if the tariff is 
reduced, as proposed? Js it the gamblers in human life 
and soul? (see statistics of suicide, 90 per cent, of which 
destroy life and soul through sheer doubt of ever again 
procuring their wonted subsistence) ; the gamblers in 
wealth and virtue? (how many thousands forced, through 
stark privation, to sell their virtue or the soul in order to 
sustain the body) ; or is it the base, servile gamblers in 
American honor, who won the polluted pot known as 
Seyd's second deal? 

Under the influence of free trade the industry will 
wane ; then where will we put or place these people told 
to quit or forced into idleness? Will we arm them and 
put them to guard the 3,000,000 vainly hunting employ- 
ment, and have them see to it that the unarmed do not 
get employment, or importune our bank-protected pro- 
teges by craving work or bread? Well, well! Another 
idea struck us ! Can we not send them down to the Ar- 
gentine Republic or to Australia, where they have about 
100,000,000 sheep each, and fine grass, a favorable climate. 

259 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

sparse population, cheap labor (that's the keynote), and 
only one-half cent freight per pound to New York or 
Boston, while from that recreant Rocky Mountain region 
it costs three cents per pound to poor, old, ancient, obso- 
lete Boston? How does that idea strike you, old man? 
Think we ought to get a post office with a hole in it to 
deposit our mail ! 

The other racking question remaining to absorb the 
deepest attention of all thoughtful men is. What shall 
we do with the great sheep range when abandoned? Can 
we not make an enchanting enclosure of it and set it 
apart for the propagation of the buffalo and baptize it 
"The European Reserve," and strictly restrict the in- 
dulgence in the amusement of the chase to those only 
who can afford to retain a pack of bailiffs, beagles and 
other dogs ? Oh, would it not be enough to engender epiph- 
ora in our foreign guests and precipitate mental enta- 
sia to him who would endeavor to explain his enthusiasm 
at the enormity and excellence of such an enterprise, as, 
for instance, what an overflowing fulness of the micro- 
scopic-muddy soul, enough to irrigate all our beets, it 
would cause in the aesthetic European, that warty, with- 
ering "waif of a musty aristocracy, when on his hunt, not 
only for a buffalo, but also for a buxom, cornfed million- 
aire's daughter, to whose credit it must be said that she 
does not haggle long over the terms of sale ; it may prob- 
abl}^ be, though, on account of her burning desire to 
learn how they do it over there, or probably it may be 
from over-anxiety to get any at all, since, belonging in 
that class of unprotected, competitive commodities, for 
we see that nine times out of ten a tingling title and a 
reprobate record can have the whole of the goods, ready 
to pack in a moment's notice, for transportation abroad. 
So, indeed, he would be a callous-hearted, miserly wretch 
who would find fault or murmur at such a bargain, were ) 
he aware of the commercial fact, backed by missionary 
authority, that in darkest, darky Africa an ebony wife, 
with a good, strong ring in her nose, will bring in open '« 
market all the way from one and one-half cents to $ioo \ 
apiece ! j 

The same reasoning that applies to one commodity \ 

260 

■ i 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

applies to all, when under or surrounded by similar con- 
ditions. The farmer did not ask that the duty be taken 
off of wool, but the manufacturer wants the duty on wool 
taken off, but wants the duty retained on fabrics or goods 
manufactured therefrom. Why do we meet those con- 
flicting ideas? They are prompted by the natural, avari- 
cious instinct of the lower animal man, and euphoniously 
christened personal interests. Here also we find evi- 
dences in full force of the discrimination in favor of the 
few or wealthy, as against the many or poorer classes. 
For the farmer who was so lucky as to have $2 to spare and 
invest in one sheep, or even the godmother's present to 
poor, little ''Mary of a lamb," could enter into the wool 
industry, and thereby gain a direct benefit of an existing 
tariff premium on home-produced wool. But it requires 
a large capital to enter the wool industry — that is, in its 
manufacture — in competition with the foreigner; conse- 
quently the poorer masses are barred out from entering 
the field where the proposed direct benefits from tariff 
would be received ; our politicians and capitalists are well 
aware of all this, hence protection on the finished product. 

And why should not this be so, while you keep on vot- 
ing for both such political scoundrels to represent you? 
Then you cannot murmur if you now receive the treat- 
ment that sooner or later all scoundrels will be rewarded 
with, that is, the forgetfulness and contempt of all. But 
is not the wool the finished product of the sheep or wool 
raiser, and does he not have to pay for and purchase 
labor and supplies, as well as those in any other branch 
of this industry or any other? And, further, does he 
not risk his capital for a whole year before receiving 
either pay or profit? 

As time enters as an important factor in connection 
with the consideration of the cost of wool growing, since 
the manufacturer of woolen goods may readily sell his 
product to the full amount of his capital at least three 
times to the sheepraiser^s once ; therefore, due allowance 
should be made for such conditions in adjusting the rela- 
tive amount of duty, protecting each division of the indus- 
try. It is, indeed, doubtful that a greater amount of 
expenditure and labor is required to produce a given 

261 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

weight of average woolen fabric from clean wool at the 
factory than a like weight of clean wool from the sheep, 
as the whole railroad freight is paid in the protection 
price or tax set on wool by the consumer, as he pays all 
costs, which the manufacturer and wool raiser sim^ply ad- 
vances in the hope of receiving a sleek, fat interest. 

But, admitting that it requires more labor for weaving, 
etc., than for raising wool, and -allowing for every eleven 
cents on clean, unspun wool, that eleven cents and four- 
teen cents more, or a total of twenty-five cents, on the 
woolen, finished fabric, ready for the consumer or peddler 
to the consumer, the wool man no doubt would agree to, 
but he says, while meekly acknowledging and alarmingly 
recognizing his own mental inability to unravel the rid- 
dle, that he alone is not only puzzled, but he firmly be- 
lieves that all other sane, impartial men are also, by the 
singular query. Why protect one division of a great 
industry and leave the other to compete with the cheap- 
labor foreigner unprotected? There is no sane man, un- 
influenced by pecuniary, mercenary or other base consid- 
erations, can see the philosophy or consistency in such 
incongruous action, and but who, on mature reflection, 
would' pronounce such proposition or action as either 
the vapid vaporings or the apparent work of imbeciles, 
ignorance of the important subject, or base betrayal of 
common American interests. 

If it is right to protect the manufacturer of woolen fabrics, 
which requires the application of force and labor power 
in the operation, it is equally right to protect the wool 
raiser, considering the vast number who could enter it 
who, perforce, must apply an analogous amount of force 
and skill in the operation, the sheep being his machine, 
that must be tended properly as to quantity and quality, 
in order to produce the proper amount or desired result. 
Were it found or deemed advisable to remove some of 
the duty from wool on account of the unnecessary hard- 
ships wrought on a vast majority, of which there is no 
proof, and no complaints from that vast majority, it 
could have been reduced to, say, six cents, or one-half, 
and that six cents to be applied as a bounty on Ameri- 
can wool, which would give over four cents per pound, 

262 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

as we raise only about three pounds out of every live of 
our total consumption and import two out of every five, to 
each and every producer of one pound of wool. The col- 
lector of internal revenue could pay this bounty to the 
producer direct on a warehouse receipt for so much- 
American produced wool, which could then be manufac- 
tured where raised, if desired, and thereby save freight 
on the wool east at least. This bounty paid direct to the 
wool raiser would enable him to establish woolen mills. 
(Oh ! Out on such rot ! For that would be pure and 
sound Democracy. Politician.) 

And suppose that with free wool American wool would 
sell for six, eight, twelve or, say, sixteen, cents per pound ? 
With this duty of six cents, it would sell for twenty-two 
cents, and the four c^nts of bounty to the wool raiser 
would bring him twenty-six cents per pound. Or, if 
he was compelled to freight it to Boston at three cents 
per pound, he would still have the American price of 
twenty-three cents, and the foreigner, on paying one-half 
cent to Boston, would only receive fifteen and one-half 
cents, or seven and one-half cents less than the Ameri- 
can. AVhile the manufacturer could buy from the Ameri- 
can at twenty-two cents, freight paid, or from the for- 
eigner at twenty-two cents, freight paid, whichever he 
preferred, this would keep up the price of wool and, inci- 
dentally, all other commodities, until the industry could 
supply the home consumption, when the bounty, through 
a gradual decrease, should be taken ofif and substituted 
by a prohibitory duty, as we are not intended to work 
for the benefit of foreigners, who support crowns or other 
governments, and the producer or laborer is always 
willing to pay an American price for anything he con- 
sumes when he receives a relatively commensurate rec- 
ompense for his labor and will power, in conjunction 
with the forces of nature, or his productions. And if it 
is of any benefit to society to have or receive $i of socie- 
tary fiction, that can have fully $i worth or measure of 
real value to back it, for eight pounds of wool, then it 
must be twice as beneficial to have or pay and receive 
$2 of legal fiction for the wool; provided that that 
S2 is backed by S2 worth of realty, for all economic phi- 

263 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

losophers and all others agree in proclaiming that an 
abundance of money and high prices are most highly 
productive of real progressive enlightenment and happi- 
ness. Why, then, if this factitious and fictitious agent of 
society, intended to lighten the burdens of barter and 
to bring about a greater diversification of comforts, con- 
veniences and incidental associative communion, money, 
in abundance and its concomitant high prices are so con- 
ducive of such prosperity, progress and felicity, we again 
ask, wh}^, then, do we find well paid, public, political 
poltroons reducing the current prices of American com- 
modities by pandering to the whims of our commercially 
foreign competing foe ? 

Now who would suffer most by the duty, or by the duty 
and bounty combined, both at present and in the future? 
We are afraid that the poor Australian will be apt to get 
it in the neck. It is reasonable to presume that, under 
duty and bounty, that the wool production would in- 
crease, so that in not many years hence we could produce 
a sufficient supply for home consumption or requisition, 
so that for every pound that we produce now and for 
every pound of increase the foreigner would not get or 
receive a free trade price. Oh ! the free trade cullion 
exclaims, but we get our wool cheaper than when we - 
had to pay a bounty ! Then his speech is made. He looks 
wise and staggers to his seat. 

Now, my fellow citizens, it is true you got your wool 
for sixteen cents under free wool, and the Australian got 
his sixteen cents in his money, gold, for his wool. But 
under six cents duty and four cents bounty, which the 
six cents would give, you got your pound of wool 
for twenty-two cents, and also you got or retained your 
twenty-two cents in your own country, which enabled 
the sheep herder to buy a suit of clothes, instead of 
compelling him to move to the equator, there to rig him- 
self out in their Sunday full-dress suit of a sombrero hat 
and a rag on his sore toe. Of that twenty-two cents you 
paid for the wool j^ou paid six cents bounty or duty to 
the American in order to enable him to pa}^ American 
current prices for his supplies; if you bought it of the 
foreigner he only received sixteen cents, le§s the freight, 

264 



* PLAIN. ECONOMIC FACTS 

while you allowed the American to receive twenty-six 
cents, less freight, to encourage home industry and there- 
by tend to keep up the prices relatively on your own 
productions, which might have been turnips to feed the 
sheep or cotton that you exchanged with him, or hops 
to make beer to quench his thirst. So, if you did not pat- 
ronize your own sheep herder with your own money, 
then he would not have that money to in turn patronize 
you with. If we raised no wool and paid out $100,000,000 
per annum for wool, most likely we would have most 
of the wool, but the Australian would have our money; 
but if we raised all we require for our own consumption, 
then we would have the wool and the money, too. See? 
(I know the light is bad and the print is small, but just 
step this way and I will loan you grandfather's glasses, 
so you can see the point!) All are agreed that the spin- 
ner, the weaver, the tailor, etc., should be protected. But 
why not labor of every calling? 

It is evident that the more increase there is in the 
world of any commodity, its measuring appraiser, money, 
not increasing in a relative proportion, the less general 
current price it will bring, the need of it remaining nor- 
mal, and that the marked increase of any commodity in 
any country, under similar conditions of non-increase 
of money, has a relative effect in tending to lower the 
price in that country, and in every other country. And 
except that increase of production is kept within bounds 
of home consumption, then the price, or such conditions, 
would be a matter beyond the power of regulation of any 
one country, but not under any other circumstances, if 
society should so elect or choose. Any country — this 
country, for instance — can establish at least once price 
and maintain it at which any commodity will not be sold 
for less, which price would be the lowest price of any 
country having a surplus to sell that could enter into 
the competition, plus the duty imposed on the importa- 
tion, so that if they came and gave their goods for noth- 
ing the duty price would still remain. Now this opens 
up another question, which we will not deal with here. 
That is. Why cannot government set a price on all its 
own production, which price it cannot fall below ? 

265 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

In paying this duty we are stimulating home industry or 
production, and. instead of calling it tariff, it should be 
known as an act to promote industry and providing for 
compulsory patriotism, forcing you to aid and patronize 
home activity in preference to sending your shekels to 
strangers. Let prices go up ! Set no value on money but 
that already set on it by society — a legal power to cancel 
debts ! Money is but the stereotyped photograph of the 
will of a community, in everchanging, tangled meaning- 
words expressed, and vulgarly called law. In promoting 
home industry, by giving -a premium to one or more 
commodities, we thereby stimulate other industries rela- 
tively by creating an increased consumption for their 
wares, and also creating an increased ability to purchase 
for the masses, and when they are not possessed of that 
ability all business becomes stagnant, and it is then that 
the myopic merchant seeks the cause of the depression 
in the decrescent fascination of the accustomed smile of 
his salesman, who is sent, with his countenance of woe, 
to swell the ranks of the tramp, if he has not enough 
money to buy a first-class, limited ticket over the mor- 
phine road. So, increase your money and let prices go, 
if they will, to $5 per bushel for wheat — for where money 
is plenty all commodities are high, particularly all virtue 
that increases to the fourth power of the ratio of circulation 
per capita, and then only can human effort be moderately 
appreciated by idle, indolent, interest gatherings: idolators 
of money. Remember that money is but the illustrative, 
illusionary factor of man's imagination, perverted by per- 
nicious laws from the ideal conception of its creators, 
and that all the money in the world is not worth one 
soul hurled to suicidal damnation for the need of its 
proper proportion. 

We simply want duty enough levied on foreign com- 
peting commodities to allow for the difference in wages 
between this and foreign countries, as also a correspond- 
ingly proportionate difference for the capital invested. 
A fair increment for active capital would be, when all 
expenses, with fair remuneration for all actively con- 
nected with the enterprise, would be deducted, 10 per 
cent., should be allowed bv all on active capital ; that is, 

'266 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

if 3 per cent, would be the legal rate allowed for the use 
of inactive capital or money loaned by the banks or 
others; but one-tenth of i per cent, allowed for the use 
of money, other than to government for legitimate ex- 
penses, is social robbery, or it may be a legal robbery 
perpetrated on society. 

The question may be asked, When the home industry 
could supply our wants would you still keep on the duty 
on wool? Most assuredly! When a capitalist in any 
enterprise — a tailor, a weaver, a distiller or an organ 
grinder — is protected from competition, we propose to 
protect all others who may require it or demand it, and 
to build a protective wall so high around luxuries so that 
there would not be a pine in Oregon tall enough to make 
a ladder long enough to reach to the top, so as to compel 
the sophistical free trader to splice them before he could 
get his head over to gaze wistfully and wearily towards 
the rising sun, where, intently and suspiciously watch- 
ing each other, the only real beneficiaries of American 
free trade and its consequent, consistent advocates dwell. 
In that land made famous by poet and historian, as inor- 
dinately prolific of princes, paupers, pulpits, powder, pec- 
toral pendants and standing armies. 

LEAD. 

Before leaving the tariff question let us pry into a part 
of the prickly points of protection in connection with the 
plumbiferous industry. The smelting trusts or lead com- 
bines want the duty taken of¥ of lead ore, as is proposed 
in the new tariff bill, which is now one and one-half 
cents per pound. We get lead ore from Mexico, where 
it is mined by peon labor. The average wages of lead 
miners in the United States is $3 per day. The same 
trusts want the duty on pig lead maintained. Remember, 
the lead ore is the finished product of the miner and the 
pig lead the finished product of the .smelter. On^ pig 
lead the duty is two cents. On that class known as pipes, 
sheet, shot, etc., it is two and one-half cents. On white 
lead it is three cents ; but they want it all retained except 
on lead ore, the finished product of the miner; everyone 

267 



. PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

can prospect, and probably the poor man can find lead 
ore, but he cannot build a smelter or a white lead works, 
etc. See ! 

In calculating the proportionate or relative expense or 
employment of labor, or cost of production, in the differ- 
ent branches of the industry, all those interested in the 
business or conversant with the facts will easily recog- 
nize the approximate correctness of the following in the 
cost of production. Reckoning the market price of pig 
lead at four cents per pound, two cents of that being duty, 
or $80 per ton, and $40 of that being duty. On lead pipe, 
etc., the duty amounts to $10 more, or $50 per ton. On 
white lead, $20 more, or $60 per ton. Cost of production 
of pig lead in all of the different branches : 

Mining, transportation to smelter, etc., on |100 

worth of pig. lead |10, or per cent 

Reduction to pig lead (for which the miner pays as 

well as freight) smelting and refininsc $30, " 

Transportation on pig-lead, from states west of and 

through which the Rocky Mountain Range 

runs, to Kastern lead markets 25%" ; average 

oftheU. S |20, 

Total cost of $100 worth of pig-lead to the 
miner when laid in Kastern market $90, " 

Cost of reduction of $100 worth or 2,500 lbs. of 

pig-lead, to sheet, shot, pipe etc $7, or per cent 

On every $100 worth pig-lead or 2,500 lbs. l^i cent 
extra duty, or profit for reduction to shot, pipe 
sheet, etc duty $12,50, 

Cost of reduction of pig-lead, $100 worth or 2,500, 

to white lead $9, or per cent 

On every $100 worth or 2,500 of pig-lead 1 cent 
extra duty, or profit for reduct on to white 
lead $25, 

Of this $40 duty price and of the $40 foreign price for 
every ton of lead, the miner receives as pay $16 and 
$16, respectively. The smelter, etc., receives as pay, $12 
and $12, respectively; and the railroad received as profit 
and pay, $8 and $8, respectively, amounting in all to %y2, 
leaving a balance to be divided as profit for the miner 
and smelter of $8, or $4 4/7 for miner's profit, and $3 3/7 
for smelter, etc., profit, that would be from the market 

268 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

price, and of course only one-half of that as profit from 
the duty or duty price. 

Calculating that, on this basis, the duty is one-half 
the market price for pig lead — average price for 1892 was 
$4.05 — in production of $100 worth its cost was actually 
$90 for 2,500 pounds of pig lead, for which outlay $50 of 
duty was received. Or, to simplify it, for every $9 outlay 
$5 of duty price was received. The foreigner only re- 
ceives $5 out of every $10 that you pay for his lead ; 
the other $5 goes for the support of government. But 
if you buy of our miner he receives both fives ; the extra 
five is to stimulate the industry and enable the miner to 
pay you your American price for your relatively protect- 
ed commodities, whether they may be specially on the list 
or not, so that by helping your neghbor you are helping 
yourself by creating a market and living prices for your 
own production, and so on with all others. 

For the transformation of $100 worth of pig lead into 
lead pipe, sheet, shot (which lead is adulterated with a 
cheaper metal to give it hardness), at a cost of $7, one- 
half cent per lb. duty price was received on 2,500 pounds, 
or $12.50 duty on every $7, labor cost. For the total 
cost of changing $100 worth of pig lead into 2,500 pounds 
(and far more, for white lead is adulterated by a pulver- 
ized rock called baryta) of white lead $9 is expended, and 
one cent extra duty price is received, and not counting 
the adulteration on 2,500 pounds, being $25, on every 
labor outlay of $9. To recapitulate, in the following 
order : 

Outlay or 

Production. labor cost. Duty. 

Of pig-lead $9.00 $5.00 

Shot, etc., from pig 7.00 12.50 

White lead from pig 9.00 25.00 

So if you cannot here see discrimination in favor of 
capital, as against labor, you had better consult some 
eminent oculist, for our parenetic advice could have no 
bearing in the case, as we fear that amaurosis has set in. 
A ton of white lead to the manufacturer costs him about 
$89, or four and one-fourth cents per pound, with lead at 

269 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

four cents (don't speak about adulteration), and you pay 
all the way from six to ten cents a pound for it. 

The fair minded, impartial critic, whose conceptive 
and discerning powers are not obscured by partisan big- 
otry, conceit and inveterate intolerance, can plainly dis- 
tinguish the discrimination in the operations and provi- 
sions of the past, present and proposed tariff laws in favor 
of the possessor of accumulated capital, as against his 
Atlantean, though ataxic, brother. But he who in his 
solescistic apagoge, exposes or betrays by his apish con- 
tumacy his relative affinity for the other hybrid, our brec- 
ciated mule, virtually, although not verbally, admits in 
assigning his reasons for pronouncing the tariff, a meas- 
ure of equal benefit to all, that he is, and confesses them 
to be, in perfect harmony with the appropriately odd 
reason given by our most renowned savants, to the stag- 
geringly profound query. Why is it that an ass eats 
thistles? Not being versed in the genealogy of that gen- 
tle, generic race, nor- in its predilections, preferences or 
peculiarities, we deem ourselves wholly incompetent to 
give advice or recommend remedies to that particular 
class, and solace ourselves with the hope, that all such as' 
we will soon be supplanted by a generation who possess 
the benefits of our public schools, which place them in 
touch, in this age of progress, with men of broad views, 
liberal action and patriotic principle, and will constitute 
them thoroughly competent and capable of prescribing 
in the premises. 

To examine all the articles on the import tax list or 
tariff subject to duty would only result in a repetition 
of the preceding descriptions, without yielding the result 
of any material difference, and by briefly reciting the 
foregoing facts we have in open view the general work- 
ings of the law providing for an import toll or duty, as 
well as the plain, cowardly, covert intent of partiality 
for the rich of legislators in the enactment of such laws 
for the past thirty years or more. We repeat, advisedly, 
cowardly, covert intent, for the good reason that it Is im- 
possible to find a bona fide American citizen to pose for 
the suffrage of his fellow citizens, so as to represent them 
in Congress, who would be so destitute of the first rudi- 

270 



; PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

ments of education, reason and honesty, as to subscribe 
to the enactments of such unfair, partial laws ; then if it 
is impossible to find one such returned to Congress, it is 
reasonable to infer that those who voted for such meas- 
ures did so both knowingly and wittingly. It is not with 
a law providing for a levy of an import duty that fault 
is found, but with the inequality and discrimination of 
such laws, as is evidenced in all of their several opera- 
tons, similar in purport to those three that we have hastily 
examined. 

We find the farmer, with his hired help, left out, to 
rely on the cold and brittle mercies of the monopolist 
or capitalist, but all have but small appreciation or esti- 
mate of the latter's commiseration and generosity. Such 
commodities are hardly to be expected from the individ- 
ual when the example of laxity is set him by those in 
high places or its government in its looseness concern- 
ing the interests of the greater number. Can the most 
sickly excuse be offered for leaving the farmer out of 
the direct benefits of the duty on wool or sugar beets, 
for instance? It is not easy to conceive or even conjure 
up one. For the deputy internal revenue collector could 
attend to both accounts as well as the one, and yet have 
plenty of time to spare to go duck shooting, even should 
the country writhe in the financial, violent tortures of a 
blustering, banker's panic. 

The production of, say, 21,000 tons of beets, the aver- 
age product of 2,100 acres, require more labor to produce, 
and transport to the sugar factory than that required in 
their reduction, or in the extraction of their saccharine 
matter, and transforrnation into sugar and syrup, which 
latter needs the labor only of about 150 men for ninety 
days. Of course, in this connection we must remember 
that the president of such a factory or concern is no 
common mortal, and that, besides receiving the usual 
dividend on his stock, must have a salary of only $10,000 
a year, for he is supposed to be a man of fine address and 
of such business qualifications as to enable him to easily 
dispose of the stock of the concern at a good price, if so 
desired, particularly if such a thing as its failure should 
be inevitable, while the manager or president of the 

271 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

farm might at a rude guess reckon on $i per day, barring 
accidents, such as the breaking of a hamestrap or loosen- 
ing of a tire, which $i a day of the farmer, vv^hen contrast- 
ed with the candy factory president's portion, really, we 
must consider it a most liberal compensation, when we 
take into consideration the enormous amount of the 
strong, life-giving rays absorbed by the farmer in the 
many warm, summer, noonday suns, while the unfortu- 
nate sugar president is compelled to seek the puny, 
cool comfort of some artistic grape arbor and suffer the 
freezing agony of sucking an ice-cold mint julep through 
a natural straw. 

The farmer is aware, through the knowledge attained 
by his learning of his rule of three, in the moss-covered 
or lichen-strewn, log-house school that he attended long 
before, the indulging, even of speculation, in the tele- 
phonic, teleautographic or telepathic field, that if one- 
half cent per pound duty was levied on the nine pounds 
of sugar that we import, that it would yield four and one- 
half cents bounty, to be divided between him and the 
sugar manufacturer from beets on the one pound that 
they both produce, and that one-half of this, two and one- 
fourth, cents, would give him over $6 bounty on his ton 
of beets, and the manufacturer could pay over fifty cents 
a ton more for beets, and if the farmer had, say, $2 a ton 
profit on his beets when he paid $30 per month and 
board to his hired help, he could now pay $75 per month 
to his men, for he would have a profit or difference of 
$8.50 per ton to do it with ; that all is if the bounty on the 
sugar industry was paid out in a just distribution, with a 
view to giving most to that branch which required most 
labor in the operation, instead of practically supporting 
and upholding, by law and otherwise, the infamous idea 
of the inviolability of the rights of unjustly accumulated 
capital, as against the only sacred and just rights of the 
great mass of individuals who compose our nation, and 
who heretofore unmurmuringly bore, with pitiable igno- 
rance of some and the base treachery of others, of their 
legislators. 

In taking a synopsis of the many phases, in common 
with all the others, that the woolly question presents, 

2y2 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

from our ardent desire to see the perpetuation of the even- 
ness and uninterruption of the course pursued by our 
eminent states- (prison) -men, we found ourselves forced 
to the unpleasant conclusion that it is not so easy to 
pull the wool over the eyes of our sheep raiser as the 
wily, conjuring, political hybrid might suppose, or as we, 
in our sacred interest for capital, had hoped for. AVe 
had nursed this hope, from our intimate knowledge of 
the fact that, in the estimation of competent judges, the 
sheep herder's position is only second on the list of gen- 
eral insanity, or next to that individual known as the 
phrenetic, pilose prospector, who persists in prodding 
around for that primeval, precious, pyrogenous produc- 
tion. 

But, notwithstanding his unenviable public estimation 
and his total incapacity for finding a full solution for 
the enigmatical problem furnished him by tariff the- 
urgists, yet, unfortunately we find him aware of the 
fact that he has not been fairly, justly or equitably dealt 
with, as he has an inalienable right to demand, in what 
he perversely persists in pronouncing as vicious, per- 
nicious and unprincipled, the past, present, and now the 
proposed tariff law, which works an injury to him in 
bringing him in direct competition with foreign peasant 
labor, while it proposes to protect the Eastern monopolist 
only, to whose inconsiderate care the welfare and allow- 
ance, for a bare existence, of the weaver, the spinner, etc., 
is left, while he ominously shakes the head, remarking 
that human nature will but bear a certain amount of 
hypocrisy, favoritism and treachery until an imperious 
accounting is demanded, and a fit, final and full adjudi- 
cation given, and an exacting payment made. He fur- 
ther reasons thus : 

We find by statistics that last year we required about 
400,000,000 pounds of wool to supply the annual requisi- 
tion, of which we produced about five and three-fourths 
and imported four and one-fourths pounds out of every 
ten pounds consumed. Allowing thereon the average 
duty of twelve cents per pound and six pounds of wool 
to the use of every inhabitant yearly, then each one con- 
tributed seventy-two cents towards the encouragement 

273 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

of the wool industry, with a view of maintaining Ameri- 
can prices on all commodities; of that amount about 
thirty cents would be for the well known democratic de- 
ception of tariff for revenue only. Of course, this sub- 
scription not only ruined the millionaire (alas! we have 
none in our poor country now), but stoutly prohibited 
the farmer, poor fellow ! from importing enough foreign \ 
wool for his needs, so that he had not a sufficient amount to 
apply, as the doctor had prescribed, to have stuffed in. 
his ear to cure the ache contracted in listening to such 
silly doctrines as those propounded and dictated by such 
as whose incomes may be stated at $50,000 per annum — 
a sufficient amount to set their small brains a wool- 
gathering, and therefore peculiarly adapt them for the t' 
more successful and beneficial occupation of raising royal, f 
wanton, woolly wenches in Hon-u-r-a-lulu. (Is that the ^ 
way to spell it? Ta-ta!) \ 

If it could be found by some subtle and profound rea- J 
soning, deduction and method of calculation unknown i' 
to American philosophers and mathematicians that the 
tariffs on wool worked an unbearable hardship to the 
greater number on both plain and woven wool, and that (' 
such duty or tax was wholly unnecessary for the support 
of the government, who found thousands of millions in 
its Treasury that it could not apply to, or expend in, per- 
manent, profitable, public improvements from the fact 
of an unnecessary surplus of such as post offices, court 
houses, seacoast defenses, warships, etc., etc., it could 
then reduce the duty one-half on each commodity and 
apply the same as a bounty on the American production. 
But since such a policy would redound to the benefit of 
the American producer of all wealth, the laborer, we 
cannot hope for its realization very soon, knowing that 
such things are not in consonance with the propositions 
of the present, heartless, dishonest, dissolute politicians ; 
or, if not dishonesty, then the sheep herder wishes it dis- 
tinctly understood that he wants the majority of the 
banker-lawyer-Congressmen and Senators who have 
gained their seats in Congress either through misrepre- 
sentation or purchase to comply with a strict observance 

274 



I PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

for several years of one of the caprices of Mary's little 
lamb, and go to school, too. 

Indeed, we thought that we would find our sheep herder 
more docile and in a far more conciliatory frame of mind, 
but he remarked, with bitterness in his tones. Well, we, 
the producers of all wealth, would be content with $4 per 
day wages for every day's work, only, while we are aware 
of the fact that what each of us produces on an average 
amounts to $8 per day or more, while we are willing to 
give without a murmur $15 per day to our misnamed, 
misrepresenting and faithless congressional legislators, 
either when in or out of Congress, and why should they 
have $15 ? Have they got wings? And we see that, and go" it 
one better in allowing $137 per day to their dictatorial, bossy 
tutor. Who or what is he? Wonder if he ever eats any- 
thing, for holding the office, which any average, six- 
teen-year-old schoolboy or monitor in a deaf and dumb 
institute could fill and fulfil the duties of without incur- 
ring that American disease of nervousness, superinduced 
by overexertion of the brain, with more lasting credit 
to himself, and genuinely material, moral and mental 
benefit to the nation, than any President we have had in 
the office since the ever-to-be-lamented Lincoln. Well, 
such is life in these days of decaying and despised na- 
tional devotion or patriotism ! 

PROSPECTOR. 

I asked the weird, the wild, the wandering, the woolly 
Western wizard of the divining rod, the prospector, on 
his journey up the canon "Echo" what he thought of 
the alleged, condemned, discriminating tariff bill. With 
reverential, awe-inspiring eyes aglow, from whose deep 
and penetrating glance one felt that the innermost, deep 
and hidden secrets of the mountain fastnesses were to 
them as. Here I lay me down to sleep. Amen! He re- 
plied: Since the lofty, pride-inspiring, magical message 
received from our immortal Lincoln, "Go, tell our pros- 
pectors we will pay our war debt with the hidden wealth 
of the Rocky Mountains ; then, with giant strides in prog- 
ress, forge ahead as nation never did before." With this 

275 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

message ever ringing in our ears, we hied ourselves to the 
higher altitudes, there to woo the goddess of fire and i 
force begotten treasures, to donate to us a mite from her , 
metallic stores to stay our miasmatic vultures from de- Ij 
manding that blood-curdling collateral, the pound of flesh, it 

While breathing the rarer atmosphere of our mountain 
peaks we found its predominant element to be the pure [ 
spirit of the triple love of liberty, equality and country, !' 
which ever purifies our mind, as its oxygen does our ll 
blood; and, thoroughly aware that our mission would i 
have long since been fulfilled, were it not for the perfidy [ 
of the presumptive and self-forcing politicians, who de- 
spoiled the nation of one-half its money at the instance 
and dictation of the wealth, bribing, byssoid, budlet 
barons, thereby increasing threefold the obligations of 
the nation, and allied with that war and peace, ever- 
implacable enemy of American prosperity, the banker, 
who uses the tariff as a cold deck to allay suspicion on 
his other bunco games, and also aware of the burlesque 
imitations of a people's progressive Presidents, 3^ou were 
at divers times cajoled into foisting upon us, for whom 
we have entertained nothing but a pity bordering on 1 
loathsomeness. Now, we have resolved never to wend 
out way to the lowlands of the Potomac, to deliver our 
happy, joyful answer to that loving, loyal, parental mes- 
sage, until you find for us another Lincoln to greet us 
there, and >i< * >i< j heard no more Here an ambient 
bevy of ptarmigan, with spotless, white plumage, as clear, 
as bright, as pure as white, as the sun-glared, dazzling 
snow around us, alighted directly in our front, from 
whose intent observation of my inveighing visitor, we 
became at once impressed with the belief that to him 
they bore the message that he was sought to speak on 
top of Elbert's peak, with the hovering spirit of the 
immortal Lincoln. And, on disengaging our eyes from 
the birds, we could nowhere behold our evanescent pros- 
pector ; he had vanished ! To this day we know not 
where. Now, feeling fascinatingly interested, with an 
uncontrollable determination we at once proceeded to 
unravel this midwinter, midday dream, or further inter- 
rogate a possible wayfaring waif from that all-mysterious 

276 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

beyond — a rather chilling, lofty undertaking, with the 
thermometer marking 20 degrees below zero, and at an 
elevation of 11,000 feet. He could not have proceeded, 
unseen, down the steep gorge, of which from our posi- 
tion we commanded a full and sweeping view; we now 
proceeded rapidly, on Norwegian shoes, up the narrow 
gulch, whose rocky, precipitous sides were almost wholly 
visible to our eager, scouting scan, but nowhere could 
be seen the king-errant of the divining rod. Now mag- 
netically fearful lest he in perilous danger might be 
placed by an inadvertent step, with peculiar anguish in 
our tones, we involuntarily screamed out: Oh, Phoenix! 
For God's sake, tell us where you are ! If in danger, tell 
us where you are, and we will come! Have courage, for 
we are near! But to our imploring appeal there was no 
response, save through her saturnalia we heard the mys- 
tical, mocking monody of "Echo" answering: "Have 
courage, for we are near!" He was gone — but we re- 
turned. 

MINER. 

A few\days later than the one on which our volatile 
visitor had winged his way to his peri-peaks we met 
with a miner, who, by the way, we find on rare occa- 
sions to be generated from the former, whom we asked 
what he thought of the proposed tariff bill. Closely 
scanning us with unmistakable anger in his every glance, 
he said: Why mention tariff to a Westerner? How do 
you expect that he can maintain his mental equilibrium 
at the mere mention of the name? How can he refrain 
from calling down the most withering, blighting curses 
on the heads of those Republicans and Democrats responsi- 
ble for the economic legislation of the past thirty years, 
who, both singly and collectively, have been the direct 
cause of reducing the price of an ounce of silver from 
$1.30 to sixty cents ; who would dare fly in the face of 
Omnipotence and tell you that, by their esoteric astute- 
ness, they had abstracted from all silver the most of its 
intrinsic attributes, and who have abetted grim death 
in snatching starved babes from off the bosoms of their 
frantically bemoaning, emaciated mothers? 

277 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

Who have blighted the hopes and blasted the lives of 
countless thousands of freemen, those of which, unable tOj 
brave out the terrible mental and physical suffering and 
national disgrace, calling loudly to the Most High fori 
vengeance, embraced to them the only alternative — that 
awful blank, that shuddering alkahest for hungered insanity, 
a suicide's grave ! Those remaining left to aimlessly 
roam the country, like the wolves of the woods or the 
buzzards of the broad expanse, seeking what by chance 
they may devour, and forcingly transforming American 
freemen into slaves, the Christian into atheist, the psalm- j 
odist into blasphemer, the righteous into thief, the virtu- I 
ous into lethal prostitute, until our fair country swarms 
with demireps, hoboes, thieves and holdups, who were j 
but yester-yule law-abiding, industrious, honest, virtuous,! 
patriotic, free American citizens. Now free to starve, j 
shunned by all and impellingly directed, as the leprous j 
outcast, to the Potter's field! Oh, spirits of Jackson, : 
Jefferson and Lincoln, whither are we drifting? Can j 
you not intercede for our national salvation? Oh, where 
are our patriots ? Where are our statesmen ? Where are 
our Americans? How dare the poltroons sully thy mem- 
ory by pressing your names through the polluted lips of 
those who, by their grinning, mocking lips, committed 
the most heinous crime that men or nation could, which 
was forestalled, pointed out and previously condemned 
by the immortal Lincoln ; which ineffaceable condemna- 
tion will be as durable as his memory, eternal in the minds 
of all lovers of liberty! 

Ah ! Yes, Lincoln ! How well I remember him, and 
how I pardonably feared that he did not comprehend 
things in general as I did then. Yes, he entered on his 
then onerous duties — well, not knowing much m.ore than 
one thousand times that of our present President now, 
but his tower of strength was his immutable character- 
istic of American commonalty, and his insatiable desire 
to learn. He listed not to the incessant, flatulent babble 
around him, and flattery he planted below zero ; ever at- 
tentive to the wishes and even hopes, the fears and even 
presentiments of his people, which, it seemed, were ever 
wafted to him on ultramundane wings, as if by an occult 

278 



1 PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

I telephone, for to him the merest whisper was as a tome 
! of lore. All this from his intimate knowledge of things 
j and their forces, and men and their ways. Yes, he who 
j was the physician of the nation, who instinctively felt 
i every pulse-throb of those excited, feverish bodies North 
i and South, for had he been a Southerner, he would have 
; been an admirable rebel, but that accidental fate that 
I planted him North peremptorily called him to that post 
i which he forever honored by his merit, worth and patriot- 
! ism, long before he was immolated as a sacrifice to peace. 
\ He who saw and felt the tangible and palpable forces of 
nature, frame men's souls, and in the very existence of 
things saw the essential incongruity of the mental cosmo- 
rama of all our people ; to him those things, remaining 
unwritten ever, were unalterable law. Yes, I often think 
I see him yet, with one hand on the helm, safely steering 
the .great ship through seemingly interminable rocks and 
shoals, and the turbulent, chopping waves of a cruel, 
internecine war. The other hand, lashing the pen, form- 
ing mute, scriptory fragments of his spotless, inner soul, 
to be scattered to ever}- compass point, bearing messages 
of sincere encouragement and love to all his people, 
particularly to that pillar on which the globe reposes, and 
whose aid nations beseech in danger, the masses; ever 
toiling with, ever battling with, ever subduing of, ever 
fructifying all the elements, that the great majority 
may barely exist while the small minority revel in luxuri- 
ous licentiousness. 

Yes, he knew them all. He calmly bore, with grasp- 
ing, griping, grovelling, greed, for goading, gory gain 
of the Eastern money-monger, with his plutonic sneer^ 
when asked to help with his money in quieting the Rebel- 
lion, and sardonic grin at the tortures endured by our 
people, both mentally and physically, from the curse of 
a mighty family feud, spurred on by the ever-g^lutinous, 
golden ghoul, tickled by his hopes of compelling us to 
give him any price he might demand for his gold, and, 
like the skulking coward that he was, he hung to the 
rear, there to find a substitute, some of whom are not 
yet paid. But he graciously condoned all that, when 
the masses made the forfeit of all they possessed and 

279 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

flocked to his standard, there to famish and to fight for 
home, country and the Union, to receive in recompense 
the undying gratitude of all true Americans, Lincoln's 
glorious, redeeming, Union-preserving forty-cent green- 
back, and now the ferine, famishing forgetfulness of the 
fickle and the false, and the scabrous, scorning slurs of 
the scumy, scurvy, servile scullions, the Southern Smiths. 

Yes, he bore with fortitude the knowledge that the 
frail, frothy, frutescent, elated. Eastern egotist ever 
nursed his doubts of any victory for the noble, good and 
true, and ever with his natural hoarding bent, chicken 
heart, sparrow brain and microscopic soul, met with 
wrathful execration all actions and ideas tending to 
human progress and universal equity. But at all this, for 
them a commiserating smile played upon his placid fea- 
tures, whenever his thoughts reverted West. For there 
he knew were all the possibilities to expand to illim- 
itable greatness, and so perpetuate his supreme, ideal 
Republic, the magnitude of which but few have yet con- 
ceived. He knew that the children of the West, in con- 
stant contact with the vivid illustrations of the forces 
of nature, in all their sublime splendor, would in simili- 
tude, become imbued with ideas as clear as the mountain 
atmosphere; with views as broad as their great expanse, 
from the broiling tropics to the archetypal, icebound Arc- 
tic; with patriotic promptings as straight, erect and im- 
movable as their vertical, gigantic, towering cliffs, and 
with liberality as generous and true as their innumer- 
able millions of pure, multiform crystals. 

He knew that no task was too enormous or Herculean 
to daunt the courage, energy and enterprise of the 
Westerners, and that when they made it possible for the 
locomotive to pass over and through those dizzy walls of 
solid rock, and thus draw the fuel treasures of the plains 
to place in the frost-chilled lap of the goddess of the 
peaks, to appease her anger for the desecration of their 
internal depths, then, and not till then, the effeminate 
Eastern nabob, on pleasure bound, might, in palace car 
ensconced, pass that way; and thus, beholding nature's 
wondrous vastness, as here in part displayed, get his 
narrow vision widened, his views expanded, his nature 

280 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

warmed, liberality germinated, and for future progress 
his fears dispelled. 

Yes, I think I see him now as I once saw him when, 
with my regiment, on our way to the front, in passing 
through Washington and nearing that old, historic bridge 
which laid in our path to the South. Yielding to custom 
and in company with our general, he took his position 
to review us. The sight of him inflamed the hearts of 
the most stoical veteran or stolid recruit with consecrat- 
ing, patriotic fire! As there, with calm demeanor, col- 
lected thoughts and hopeful calculations, he stood, with 
head erect and by hat uncovered, as though, without im- 
pediment, to allow the mind's eye to more closely pass in 
review. The slaughtered battalions now mouldering be- 
neath the turf, to fertilize the soil of freedom ! The 
lengthy rows of casks of human blood to re-dye the Crim- 
son Charter of individual liberty, fallibly fabricated the 
century before at Valley Forge ! The legions of distract- 
ed parents, relatives and friends, grieving for the loved 
ones already slain! And now, advancing forward, just 
coming into view, that bereaving rear, ever certain to 
receive his especial solicitude and parental care, formed 
by regiments of weeping widows, and their osculant or- 
phans, to them frantically clinging, as if to foil fate, 
should it demand the sacrifice of mother, too ! All — all 
this to reassert in orotund tones that supreme edict: 
The Liberty and Omniparity of Man ! Yes, I 

Here the train I awaited slowed up in front of the 
platform on which we were standing, surrounded by an 
alternating good-natured, silent-sighing, tear-dropping, 
applauding crowd. By the din made by the crashing of 
baggage, the rumble of trucks on a hollow, wooden plat- 
form, the tinkle and jingle of chinaware at dinner time, 
and the heinous snorting of the ungrateful locomotive 
that now tore itself loose from its other wheeled com- 
panions and, like all monsters, went off alone to take a 
drink, making it impossible to distinctly understand what 
our mollient, mining mountaineer was saying, so we 
moved to a spot on the platform opposite the end of the 
rear car. While on our way there, becoming fearful lest 
I find myself compelled to depart without finding out 

281 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

how my fervid, forceful, fluent friend felt in regard to 
the proposed tariff bill, and knowing that he had been 
so enrapt in the now but contingent theme of the dis- 
course, I timidly and hesitatingly ventured the remark, 
''Would not the miners of the West, with their prover- 
bial, true, American magnanimity, forgive a great num- 
ber of demirep faults if they should now place a heavy 
duty on lead and lead ores?" 

Intently surveying me with an unmistakable contempt 
in the expression of his eyes for the idea, with a search 
for any betrayal of an insincerity in my countenance, 
mingled with that certain indicative look of his doubt- 
fulness of my sanity and with an impleading negative- 
ness in his tone, he replied: ''No sir!" When nine years 
ago, not having given these subjects the attention I should 
have, in desperation I sought anything for a change and 
voted the national Democratic ticket. Ah ! well I remem- 
ber how few were the voices heard clamoring for the im- 
perative demands and just rights of the toilers ! When 
again, over five years ago, then, having a shred of faith 
left in the Republican party and promises, like the drown- 
ing man, I grabbed the straw and placed it in the Repub- 
lican box. Result, the duty of two cents on lead, one- 
half cent more on shot, etc., and one cent more on white lead, 
which mqans an expenditure of $9 for labor in produc- 
ing 250 pounds of lead at two cents duty per pound, the 
enhancement by duty on that amount is about $5. The 
same expenditure, $9, in producing sheet, pipe or shot 
from pig lead of about 3,300 pounds at one-half cent per 
pound, makes a tariff price of $16.50. The $9 expended 
for labor in producing 2,500 pounds white lead from 
pig lead (white lead is generally adulterated as follows : 
One-half white lead, with one-half pulverized rock, called 
barite, or heavy spar; this mixture is known as Venice, 
white ; two parts barite, with one part white lead is called 
Hamburg white; another, three parts barite and one 
part white lead ; this is called Dutch white. The rock is 
about four and one-half times as heavy as water, and in 
volume consists of about sixty-six parts barium and 
thirty-four parts sulphur trioxide), at one cent per pound 
makes a duty price of $25. Or for the shot manufacturer 

282 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

about three and one-third times that of the miner, and 
for the white lead manufacturer five times that of the 
duty benefit, or price, of the miner. Why this discrim- 
ination? Is it because anyone can enter mining on a 
small scale, whether capitalist or laborer, and thereby get 
direct benefit from the tariff duty on lead? But not so in 
the manufacture of shot or white lead, capital being a 
requisite it must be favored. This is not the case with 
the miner alone, but in every instance where law affects 
production, distribution or accumulation, as well as in the 
tariff. The capitalist is sacredly protected by law, and 
in his methodical and periodical reduction of rations to 
his workmen he is backed by the troops of the state, while 
the laborer is blasphemously free to take what he gets, 
hear what is said and slink, for, in political, Pinkerton, 
pander parlance, "he belongs to the rabble, anyway," 
every day in the year, with the bare exception of election 
day. 

No, sir! Never will we forgive he who henceforward 
suffers to be known as Republican or Democrat and 
would essay to defend the legislation on ecumenical econ- 
omy enacted since the days of Lincoln ; no, not even 
until the third generation in the flesh, no matter how 
profuse their penitential vows or protestations. No, he 
who would barter patriotism for pelf or patronage and 
then offer the insulting excuse, it was done under that 
orally formed shadow of party and yet remain a party to 
still deaden by poisonous plans the power that made pos- 
sible his position. Would the word traitor qualify him ? 
No, for a traitor, a novice in the art, would flee on the 
detection of his crime, in hopes to avoid its just punish- 
ment, so they must be qualified as hardened, contempti- 
ble, criminal traitors. 

How can we vote for the demirep parties, both of 
whom are calling to their aid and making use of every 
device known to Satan to lower our wages and reduce 
us to the level, or below that, of our fellow creatures 
in king, church and army ridden Europe? How can we 
continue voting for them and so forfeit that one great 
remnant of really inestimable wealth we yet possess, 
liberty? How could we vote for them3 to thereby stultify 

283 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

the memories of our ancestors, who were compelled to 
bend their thoughts, bow their heads, and forcedly con- 
tribute to church and state, as now with the established 
church, or Christ by enactment of England, etc. Those 
ancestors who were forced to donate doucer, salute the 
debauchee, unhat to the harlot and cry out to the profli- 
gate, O, my master! O, my lord! O, my king! If such 
a one to vote can be found in me who would vote for 
either of them, I pray that to my palsied eyes may the 
sun shine in sections, and the stars in an arc, woven by 
warp and woof in bars of fitful fire shine ! May the earth 
heave to my every step! May my hand and arm, as I 
raise it to cast such a vote, wither and, paralyzed, fall by 
my side, so that the curs of the street mistake it for dog- 
meat ! May all virtue seem vice and all vice seem virtue 
to mine eyes until I become such nuisance that the pub- 
lic scavenger will heave me into his cart and dump me at 
that institution, in charity and philanthropy supported 
and erected by the wealth producers for all of my class — 
the asylum for the insane ! How could we vote for them? 
A-1-l-a-board ! 

It was our conductor's stentorian order; I knew it quite 
well. I must jump on the rear platform or again be left 
in the dell. Just as my miner friend was becoming 
warmed to his subject, and, to use a phrase in common 
parlance, "was getting there with both feet," I took tny, 
or rather sprang into, position on the back platform of 
the rear cars, and as I waved my handkerchief in answer 
to the cheer with which the crowd saluted me ofif, through 
moistened eyes I beheld my miner friend shade his eyes 
with hat and move to seek some secluded spot to, as I 
supposed, mourn over the terrible thought of man's inhu- 
manity to man ! A curve in- the roadbed and my pano- 
rama was cut off from view, and as I entered the car, with 
sincere, profound regret, I involuntarily remembered that 
I was heading east. 



284 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 



PART VII. 



TAXES INTERNAL REVENUE. 

Internal revenue : how levied. — Consumer pays this home tax also. 
— Mendicant and millionaire. — The caprid angel. — Hosanna of the 
hypocrite. — To be a farmer. — Tobacco manufacturer. — Chary chem- 
ist. — Pathetic parent and syncretic son. — Shameful divergence of in- 
dividual recompense. — Circulate the $600,000,000 among the raillions. 
— Remove the duty on tobacco. — Whiskey tax. — Rush the growler. — 
The Prohibitionist. — Oh ! Fie ! Pugh ! — Open the floodgates of whis- 
key. — Double the bet on the new whiskey regulation. — Shed or shelve 
the saloon. — Basket of chips. — Look around. — Upward. — Onward. — 
Who would oppose. — Divide the $900,000,000 among the millions. — 
Tariff for revenue only. — Statistics of crime in free whiskey period 
and now. — Millionaire pays taxes. — So does the hon. hobo. — Taxes 
should be paid on what each consumes without any discrimination. — 
The banker pays but a fractional part. — Income tax. — Apodictic 
axiom. — Labor's burden. — Let the drunkard educate his children and 
support indigent parents. — Syntetic cynic. 

The second government tax is known generally as 
internal revenue — that is, within the nation, home, inside 
or internal income for the support in part of the govern- 
ment. Levied principally on distilled and fermented 
liquors ; its manufacturers, dealers or retailers ; on to- 
bacco and cigars; proprietary or patent medicines, etc., 
etc. The principal part of the government income being 
collected from the sale of internal revenue stamps (like 
postage stamps, to some extent), which each original 
package must bear or have attached ahesively, according 
to the quantity contained in the package, and also ac- 
cording to the amount assessed or imposed by law 
against the different commodities. The manufacturer, 
wholesaler, dealer or retailer pays this duty, tax or impost 
and license direct to the collector or his deputy, in pay- 
ing their license and by the purchase of the prescribed 
stamps to be adhered to each designated package, which 
payment they add to the cost price of the articles before 
selling and without having any reference to their margin 
for profit, except by an extra allowance added to that 
margin by way of interest on the monev paid or ad- 

285 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

vanced for the stamps, which payment in many cases 
occurs long hefore a sale of the goods is effected. 

This internal tax is paid by the consumer, so that he 
who consumes, most of the taxed articles pays most to the 
support of the government, regardless of what property 
he ma}^ possess, or his income or financial standing. So 
that the laborer, with half a dozen children, in purchas- 
ing for the sick child a bottle of patent medicine, pays 
as much of this duty, which is a direct expense on him, 
as it does not enable the manufacturer to increase his 
wages by the increase in the selling price of it, as does 
the millionaire for a similar bottle for his dear, little 
cherub, whose fate so far has not been so rosy, as it 
came into the cold world stark naked, and screaming with 
the cold and rough usage for one of its tender 5'^ears, 
poor, dear, little angel, most likely banished to drink 
the milk of life from a strange, unfeeling font, in the 
humping, holy hope of retarding the lines of nature from 
playfully sporting around poor, saintly mamma's coquet- 
tish eyes. If he uses tobacco, in order to divert the mind 
from pondering over the injuries wrought him and 
against his peace of mind and well-being, from the politi- 
cal-ward-bumming-heeler, up to he who rules the roost, 
he pays eight cents a pound for it, even if it is only the 
common shoestring of the backwoods, the same amount 
as is paid by Cholly for his ''select perique," of this home 
tax. If he indulges on Sunday in a two-for-a-nickle 
cigar, he pays as much of this tax as does the anglo- 
maniac, in scooting around the bay in his $50,000 inter- 
matra wrapper $1 cigar. 

Some of the best medical authorities admit — and even 
claim — that tobacco now is among the necessaries of life; 
but it is not our province to here discuss such claim. 
But, nevertheless, we believe it; we use it moderately 
and will confess that we would yield our chance of becom- 
ing Sultan of Turkey sooner than yield the solace we find 
in tobacco. We believe that the use of tobacco is not 
such an immoderate luxury as the liveried coach and 
footman, internal revenue untaxed caparisoned steed and 
superb landau, immovably remaining outside the No 
Admittance-except-well-heeled, fashionable church on 

286 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

Sunday, while the owner within is divining to himself 
how much admiration and confidence he will gain from 
those of the crowd not as well up as he, but yet, like 
the moth, will dabble in futures. And the preacher is 
divining for himself how he will cinch the future-man at 
the near, fast approaching, happy future auction sale of 
pews. It may be that the two-for-a-nickler, just then 
sitting outside the country store on an inverted, empty 
barrel, puffing away at his stogie — if he is at all fairly 
versed in capnomancy, he can plainly read in the smoke 
that if both divinators be saved from experiencing a sole- 
rending mistake in their divined speculations for the future 
that he, the caprid angel, by his wilful, worldly ways, in 
working with a will, whether warm, wet or windy 
weather — will with his wages pay for all the wool plucked 
from the lamb or wrung from the worshippers. 

Or it may be that he may hear, reverberating yet 
through the valley, on the mountaintop by the seashore, 
or even on very rare occasions and at very widely sepa- 
rated intervals at the temple, the Voice of Christ preach- 
ing patience to the fisherman, the laborers in the vine- 
yard, etc., or consoling them with the judgment pro- 
nounced: Blessed are the poor, the lowly and the meek, 
for they have been most foully dealt with, by their cun- 
ning, designing brother, who has lately been hustled from 
the temple. Or he may hear that Voice, conversely con- 
trasting the chances of those that hunger because they 
have been despoiled of their just due, with those over- 
fed, rich, cool, calculating, corruscating coterie of the cas- 
tellated, captivating, corymbiated church, mocking the hid- 
eous hovel of the hungry, huddling hordes of haggard, 
hapless humanity, while within their hearing is halloed 
the Hosanna of the hypocrite. Or he may hear, still re- 
sounding, that apposite, apostolic, comparison and com- 
mand; of the fastigiated, faithful Philip in the streets of 
Jericho, to that symbol of our pithy, pointed, puffy, pun- 
ning, polished preachers of patriarchal parataxis ; the 
individual who demanded of Philip due fraternal recog- 
nition and a just appreciation of his religious merits. 
"AVhy dost thou tempt the servant of the Lord? Get 
thee hence ! Thou second born of the devil !" 

287 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 



TOBACCO. 

The farmer who raises tobacco on a small scale is virtu- 
ally prohibited against manufacturing it by the process 
known as red tape and otherwise, that horror of the un- 
sophisticated. Should he wish to manufacture loo or 
1,000 pounds, he must keep a manufacturer's account or 
report book, and when all the fantastic requirements are 
complied with he must furnish a bond, with good and 
sufficient security, in the sum of $2,000, almost impos- 
sible for him to procure, which the collector can accept 
or reject at pleasure; he must establish a separate fac- 
tory; have printed and erected a conspicuous factory , 
sign, purchase sufficient revenue stamps in sufficient fc 
quantity, and designated price, for each package of one 
pound or less. He then may manufacture fifty pounds 
or more, but which must be previously legally accounted \ 
for, and by duly registering as retailer of tobacco he 
may sell a pound to his neighbor, mayhap, to be paid in 
railsplitting, without white or red tape measurement, but \ 
average panel length. There are other intricate prob- f 
lems connected with the manufacture and sale of tobacco 
and cigars, but we have enumerated enough so that 
anyone can deduce therefrom some covert connivance by 
politicians, or can it be ignorance, in favor of capital, as I 
against comparative poverty? (■ 

We all know that the average American leaf tobacco I' 
brings no more than ten cents per pound to the producer. I' 
Now, allowing eight cents internal revenue, ten cents 
first or cost price, one cent collection, one cent distribu- ) 
tion, two cents manufacturing; total cost to manufac- f 
turer for leaving it within consumers' reach, twenty-two ' 
cents. Common, average tobacco costs fifty cents per j 
pound retail and about forty-five cents wholesale. So we f 
see that the American son pays fifty cents for what grew [ 
on his father's farm, out of which his father received, t-o \ 
pay the interest on his mortgage, ten cents; bis Uu'-le | 
Sam, eight cents; railroad, two cents; his laboring broth- | 
ers and sisters, two cents, and that distinguished gentle- ■ 
man, whose acquaintance he formed in perusing the soci- ^ 
ety columns of the select, apish, mopish 400^ — the capital- 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

ist — who receives twenty-three cents. Oh, what an anser- 
ine action we anticipate ! In peering through some pri- 
j vate porthole, at the pathetic, patient, plodding parent 
I and his sympathetic, syncretic son, voting to perpetuate 
I their silly, shadowy shibboleths. Protective tariff for 
i capital only, and tariff for revenue only, which, when 
' analyzed yields but two constituent elements, known to 
I the chary chemist as : All taxes paid by the consumer 
I only, and all profits made by the monopolist only. Yes, 
I voting for the inviolable rights and freedom of capital 
I from taxes, with their miserable exception of individual 
j consumption in common with the most indigent itinerant. 
I If tobacco is a noxious luxury, why not prohibit its 
I production, manufacture, importation and sale? For it 
I would be a crime against humanity to admit it, and if it 
I is a soothing comfort, take away all restriction and re- 
straint from its production, manufacture and sale, and 
thereby fosteringly and freely promote another American 
industry, as well as send it a-swimming with a spirited 
stimulus by placing a sufficient duty on patriotically 
j injurious, luxurious, foreign tobacco to equal that now 
existing and also all the revenue on the home proauc- 
I tion, with a view of enhancing the price whicli the 
farmer receives, and by dividing the legitimate profits to 
be derived from its production among the now virtually 
unprotected millions, instead of the favored hundreds 
who monopolize the business, which would allow every 
producer to enter into an honest competition. The many 
are willing that he should receive twice the present price 
he now does for his leaf tobacco, thereby enabling him to 
pay at least twice the present wages, which he would 
be compelled to pay, for the reason of the impossibility of 
a combine of so many thousands, so widely scattered and 
so differently circumstanced as are those now engaged in 
its production, v^hich would have a tendency to divide 
the wealth of the nation, as well as its representing 
ghost, money, among the many, which would have an apo- 
i dictic tendency to preserve our institutions. 
j Under the law, as it now exists, v^hat shameful dis- 
I crepancies, as regards individual recompense are discerni- 
i ble to the most insipid, sinistrous sycophant? We pay, 
i 289 

i 
I 
L ■ _„ „._. ._.. .._. 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

six days in every week $5 per day (none to much) to 
the deputy internal revenue collector, that useful, bum- 
bullying-herder at the polls, while the average tobacco 
raiser, with his years of unremitting labor and its small 
remunerating fruits, all invested in his farm, who, indeed, [ 
has resplendent reason to rejoice and immolate a thanks- 
giving-aged drake and ancient rooster, if his annual in- 
come will sum up the enormous income of $20 per month 
for the farm, him and all his chicks, while we know that 
all his children from eight years up are self-supporting 
were it only in their worming of tobacco. 1 

While offering the foregoing suggestions, we are not f 
forgetful of the fact that anything that would, revert to I 
the benefit of the greater number is not in line with the ' 
policy pursued by the demirep parties, now or for the 
past thirty years — the Rep. party in favor of protection 
to capital only, and the Demi- party to trusts and com- 
bines, death, on paper only. For here in this, as well • as ^ 
in other industries, the opportunity is and was open to ; 
them to remove all tax, restriction and restraint from an 
American industry ; and instead of the $600,000,000 annu- 
ally expended for tobacco, of which the American pro- ) 
ducer receives less than $60,000,000, the government ! 
about $100,000,000 for internal revenue and tariff duty, 1 
railroad or collection and distribution $15,000,000, labor; 
$55,000,000, all told, or a total for government and pro- j 
ducer, labor and railroad of $270,000,000, with tariff duty ; 
included, and allowing $60,000,000 for ad valorem foreign | 
tobacco, would leave $270,000,000 for the idle, indolent | 
capitalist or monopolist to conjure, in cahoots by giving! 
an odd cheroot to the windy politician and seeing the I 
treasurers of the national political executive committees, j 
The full repeal of the present law, and consequent re- 
mQval of all tax or restraint, would redound to the benefit ! 
of all those commonly and directly concerned in its pro- 1 
duction and consumption, for it would leave it at one- I 
half its present price to the truly loyal consumer, and ' 
at least double the remuneration for the producer, and ; 
double all wages paid to those laborers, who then could j 
become individual manufacturers, as a capital then of 
$5 would be sufficient to start a cigarmaker up in busi- 

290 






PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 



ness, and, allowing double price and wages, would yet 
leave a large surplus for other methods of manufactur- 
j ing. 

i If the revenue was needed for the support of govern- 
j ment to the present import duty, the amount of the 
i present internal revenue could be added in their puffy, 
; proposed tariff for revenue only. And should a deficit 
I be anticipated, offset it by an equitable, graduated income 
I tax, and here at least show proof by this one atomic illus- 
tration of their interest in the just welfare of the masses, 
for whose benefit we might suspect that they laid awake 
o' nights designing plans for bettering the condition of 
the farmers, the laborers, and all active or real producers 
and distributors, were it not that we ran across a copy of 
one of their chief New York organs, and there found a 
practical illustration of the estimation that their readers 
are held in, or set at, by the chief exponents of demi pro- 
posed intentions and appreciation, the chief principle of 
their objects being the Jew-peddling, cheap-John jewelry 
to their easily hoodwinked, fascinated prey. Against the 
free, the untrammeled, and the unhedged manufacture 
and sale of this production, now intently surrounded by 
ambiguous, verbose, awe-inspiring, Uncle Sam laws, it 
cannot be adduced, by way of excuse, that its manufac- 
ture cannot be entered into promiscuously or by anyone, 
for it is a well-known fact that neither adept expert- 
ness, nor subtile skill is a peremptory requisite, nor the 
present intrinsic qualities cannot be altered, except fanci- 
fully, by a mixture of different grades, and an aroma 
given by steeping or spraying tobacco in or with a solu- 
tion of aromatic drugs ; but the greater number of its 
producers and consumers care not for fumes or flavor, but 
for firm, famed fact arid fair, fellow fealty instead, and 
the festal opportunity to pass their dreary winters in re- 
munerative, repletive and recreating occupation, if not 
reciprocal. 

WHISKEY. 

The tax imposed on whisky in its manufactiire and 
sale has had similar results in its operation as the tax on 
tobacco in building up and maintaining gigantic trusts 

29T 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

and combines or the aggregation of capital in the hands 
of the few, instead of diffusing the Hfe blood of the nations 
towards an equal distribution, through its numberless, 
little veins, giving that healthful circulation indispensable 
for the sanity of either individual or national body.: 
All suggested provisions pertaining to tobacco apply toj 
whisky with equal force. If it is an insanity and death ij 
dealing agent, prohibit it ! But, since it is evident that 
our government always judged otherwise, by the fact of! 
selecting it as a fit subject for taxation, through the cer- 
tainty of its distillation and sale, and the further fact 
of regulating and licensing its production and sale, yet!, 
failed to regulate its individual consumption, which would j^ 
and could be more easily accomplished than its prohibi-i) 
tion, notwithstanding the fanatic zeal of its illiberal, un 
reasoning, sophistical advocates, whose euphoniously , 
erotic and engagingly persuasive intentions and philan- 
thropy are only skin or pocket deep, and who rarely real- 
ize, with what admirable alacrity and feelings full of 
hopeful serenity, through that overcrowded, redolent, ple- 
thoric ant-metropolis, the laborer's wife, with her lord's 
bright and shining, metallic lunch casket, will wend her 
way to her, on the most joyful errand of the day, to 
that rejuvenating font, the ale pump tap, or to use her 
own parlance, with dad's dinner bucket, "rush the 
growler," in the Tenth Ward ; for a dim.e's worth of that 
elixir of life, in order to relax with it the overtaxed mus- 
cles of the body and the brain. 

Our chanting choristers of chronic charity rarely real- 
ize or recognize what a pathetic position they occupy 
when pinching every penny in order to have their names 
emblazoned high up on the list of erratic cranks, who sub- 
scribe to foreien missions, while the objects of their silly 
solicitude hold them in righteous, profound pity and 
withering contempt for their self-laudation and presumed 
supercilious superiority, as, for instance, the Buddha or 
Buddhist, Avhose run of religion and civilization, during 
its history of all those centuries, is not once stained 
with the spilling of blood or sacrifice of human being, in 
order to gain the favor of their god of pride, arrogance 
and dictation; yet our clattering Christians will compla- 

292 



i 



j PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

cently compile moral codes, church dress designs, shade 
' and street etiquette, describe the place for poor and desig- 
! nate the distance for them, prescribe and regulate the 
\ food and drink, as though, by. chanting a corticose chorus, 
j they' had produced it all, and, prompted by vulgar, fellow 
; feeling, had donated it to those not thus provided with 
I the power to procure a pitiable part; while they were 
I never known to make a self-sacrifice of their puffed-up 
j pride or expend one word of common justice in the favor 
[ of their down-trodden, capital-ridden, tax-eaten, police- 
clubbed, dog-hunted, judge-jailed, vermin-covered, in- 
sane asylum caged brethren and sisters in Christ. What 
would the Buddhist say if told this? Oh, fie! Pugh! 
Out on such religion ! 

Those chanting, easily satisfied reformers, whose pre- 
scriptive, superficial forms for the individual inner con- 
sciousness, may be shocked at the suggestion, we here 
now advise real reformers, that they should labor for its 
consummation. Open the floodgates of whisky and let it, 
unconfined by proscription, revenue, restraint or restric- 
tion, flow freely over our land at one-fifth the price to 
our poor consumers, it now costs, in hopes that it may 
painlessly and tenderly float in rivers of euthanasia, to 
the ocean of eternity, the unfortunate, wercked drift- 
wood of our conniving, so-called. Christian, civilizing 
cupidity. Or, do you presume to have found a better way 
of doing things than God the Father did, according to 
your Biblical account of His making and leaving man a 
free agent? But, in this connection, that old man Adam 
did eat the fruit. Why? Oh, just because it was forbid- 
den ! 

Now we will stake — although we are not a shining 
sport — either of our reputations you choose, the one for 
poverty, dishonor, dishonesty and doltishness, or, since we do 
not care for trifles, that one for wealth, honor, honesty and 
perspicuous philosophy. That the least possible restrictive 
impositions placed thereon, that the least possible harm will 
be incurred by society and the soul, from its bibbing, and we 
will double the bet, that it will only be a comfort, a boon 
and a blessing to the weary worker when his toilsome day is 
ended, and a direct source of revenue to the greater number, 

293 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

if the following slight regulation is inserted in the law and 
enforced. That is, when all tax, duty or impost whatever 
on the American production is removed from its manufac- 
ture, distillation and sale, to enact a law providing a penalty 
of fine and imprisonment for a term of no less than five I 
years, for anyone selling liquors, except by measure, or al- I 
lowing anyone, or individuals, to assemble, congregate or re- I 
main on the premises where sold, or any other public or j 
private habitual resort where liquor may be considered one 
of the attractions or dispensations, or in other words, rele- 
gate the public resort known as saloon, barroom, bar, etc., 
to the cobweb covered archives of the ferocious, lion-pit 
arena. 

It is ever with man and his coadjutrix, as we find it in the 
simple, silly, singular story of Adam, that whatever is re- 
stricted or forbidden in which they can personally par- 
ticipate or share its enjoyments or partake of its bane, 
balm or benefits, the temptation to them to partake increases 
in brilliancy and seductive charms, as the prescribed penalty 
or imposition rises in the scale of severity. With what sweet 
sensitiyeness and heart-swelling satisfaction that each one 
enjoys, the secret transgression and strictly forbidden, and 
forcefully condemned action of whatever nature, and what 
elegant elation at their own acuteness in deceiving that 
public prying eye, or cheating that promulgated public politic 
mandate. And why not? For sometimes with most of us 
churchgoers, while loudly proclaiming our most impregnable 
professions of faith in the most strict and severe moral and 
religious codes, of the most taut and furious consciences, yet 
how we will secretly chuckle at our perspicacious business 
propensities and presentiments, in proving our premises as to 
the best paying property, and smile all over, like the pro- 
verbial basket of chips at the promptitude with which we re- 
ceive our rents for the saloon and the bawdy house, without 
allowing to enter our narrow, proscriptive conscience one 
pang of self renunciation, regret or remorse. And why not? 

Let him who is without transgression, or immoderate in- 
dulgence, cast the first stone. Look around! Upward! On- 
ward! Widen your narrow vision! Broaden and brighten 
your circumscriptive and . sombre views ! Cease preaching 
theological conundrums and practice some of the faith o 

294 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

the brotherhood of man that is within you, and cease your 
fruitless efforts to stifle it. So that next year it cannot be re- 
corded against you in heaven, as it was in 1893, the immola- 
tion on the altar of lust and greed for gain and foul flattery.* 
of 235 of our brethren in Christ. Oh, could there be found 
among us, a lying hypocrite, w'ho' would ascribe as the sole 
cause of such action their intemperate indulgence in whiskey 
as one demijohn could never do that, he should be elected at 
least to the position of second-class stoker in pit 13, that is 
the most central pit in Hades. Our personal opinion in the 
matter is that such a berth would not indeed be any better 
than he really deserves, for all through life we always enter- 
tained the highest admiration for such daringly courageous 
heroes as him. 

If yo'u stop the congregating of people in saloons, theatres, 
etc., where liquors are sold, or stop the sale of liquor to be 
drank on the premises, you will accomplish more reform, 
from the abuse of liquor in one year, than could be done in 
a century by prohibition pure and simple. It is to be ex- 
pected that the whiskey interests, viz., trusts, combines, 
corporations, individual distillers, wholesale dealers, and that 
great horde of mistaken, misguided, misplaced philantropists 
who are ever ready tO' allay the thirst of the weary traveller 
on life's stormy journey even for the mere pittance of a 
dime, would with ferocity and financial fays fight such a 
law to the death. And why should they enter protest? 
Simply because, if all were free without fine or fault, to 
enter into its production and sale, then a capital of $50 
would be sufficient to make a start and enter the business 
as manufacturer, retailer and consumer combined. (Oh, 
what a glorious time we'd have, eh!), which would tend to 
divide the $900,000,000 annually spent for drink among the 
70,000,000 instead of among the hundreds or thousands 
which would give a greater diversification to our farmers 
and send our aforesaid philanthropists to some more honor- 
able sphere, to exploit their superb talents towards the eleva- 
tion of mankind. 

But we should not forget that it does not come within the 
calling of the politician of the present day to entertain for a 

* Repeal of silver purchase act without a substitute. 

295 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

moment such a preposterous proposition, for it would tres- 
pass on the preponderant prerogatives of capital. But in 
these days of occultism if we could only hypnotize him into 
doing something for the masses, in the hope of staying na- 
tional and individual mania towards suicide, the one pur- 
blind by power, pomp, pride and putrid pusillanimity, and 
the other blinded by the perpetual fear of the probable post- 
ponement of that prodigal pint of porridge, prescribed as 
necessary for further existence. The politician, if under 
such spell, might take off this tax from an American industry 
and consumption and place it on the imported luxurious 
champagne, brandy, wine, ales and the skutch baerls, so as 
to give the cock of the walk, or king of the roost, from 
Buzzards Bay, a chance to show his wisdom in working the 
racket of tariff for revenue only. 

In closing the saloons you would deprive the drunkard 
of the opportunity of expounding his profound knowledge of 
the problems of life during the periodical electric ebullitions 
of his forceful brain, for the mere cost of treating his select 
audience, who rarely ever work, neither do they spin, except 
baseless yarns from which they weave a gasy garb to robe 
in splendor their unrealizable hopes, but to whose credit it 
must be acknowledged, never are they guilty of paying for 
the drinks. 

You would deprive him. of that mesmeric influence of the 
thrilling, tinselled tesselation of the surroundings, and the 
obsequious, obliging attentions of that affable presiding offi- 
cial, and deprive him of the privileges in the private house 
of carrying on his orgies that are not only allowed, but hil- 
ariously applauded in the barroom as long as he is good at 
the bar of Int. Rev. ; and thus compel him, if he would, 
to satiate his passions at home in the presence of a probable 
sick wife and more than likely shabbily dressed, with her 
two great toes playing peek-a-boo in her shoes, and among 
half-fed and half-naked children. If such was the case his 
brutal courage might fail him, as an object lesson sometimes 
leaves an impression on the most obdurate or disordered 
brain. But the flask consumed in pledging the lasting sacred- 
ness of loving neighborly friendship, long tried and true, 
cemented and purified by the sanctity and privacy of the 
home, was never productive of evil, nor never will. 

296 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

Let the advocates of taxed whiskey look over the statistics 
of the period when liquors were free and see if you find the 
one-tenth of the crime, privation and suicide that now struts 
through every nook and cranny in this lavishly fertile land. 
Compare your list of suicides then and now, your electrocu- 
tions (could you not cut them off fast enough by the old 
time-honored fashion or method of) hangings, your murders, 
your jails and penitentiaries, outdoing the proverbial street 
car, your 500 millionaires and your 5,000,000 hunted, hound- 
ed, human beings humbly begging to work, as God com- 
manded none should eat without, and tell us would free 
whiskey work such hellish havoc in a century as the cen- 
tralization of the $900,000,000 did in a decade ? Oh, precious 
prudes, please cease your psalmody and voice your volition 
for the alleviation of the misery inflicted by pernicious, 
vicious laws in harmony with capital on that persecuted, 
despised being created in the image and likeness of God. 
Yes, your brother in Christ, man, and for once be advised 
by the innocent boy in the pastoral, when his mother and 
sister Jane went out to pray, "Oh, that mother would take 
a tumble !" 

In the collection or levying of the home tax or internal 
revenue on what may be called a purely American produc- 
tion, as also in the tax levied on foreign commodities enter- 
ing into competition with our own, which is sometimes, or in 
one case, partly used as a bonus on home production, such as 
sugar. We see that such taxes are collected in an irregular 
and undefined manner, leaving the burden equally on every 
consumer, whether he be a millionaire or mendicant, except 
when the millionaire is travelling abroad, then he pays taxes 
only where he consumes and leaves the laborer tO' hustle to 
support this government, providing that each consumes an 
equal amount of wool, wheat, whiskey, sugar, tobacco, etc., 
and as any individual cannot consume much more than any 
other except in the way of drink, we find that the laborer 
with a half dozen children pays more for the support of the 
national government than the millionaire with one or two, or 
perhaps none. The consumer pays towards the support of 
the general government in proportion to the amount he con- 
sumes, regardless of the amount of property he possesses or 
benefits he derives. The greater part of this government tax 

297 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

is expended for the protection and preservation of large 
property interests, for the adjudication of such claims, for 
judges, courts, marshals, etc., which the poor consumer never 
enters, for the supervision of distilleries, bonded warehouses^ 
etc. Some thoughtless people may say that the latter pay 
all the internal revenue, but no, such is not the fact. 

It is true that they advance it to government and thereby 
undertake its re-collection or payment with interest added 
as profit, on the sale of their goods. Here again comes the 
genteel banker with that freezing wooden look, say with 
$1,000,000 capital, in United States bonds, for which he re- 
ceives 4 or 5 per cent, interest in gold from government, 
which the consumer has to pay, and $900,000 in banknotes 
■for which latter he pays government i per cent., which he 
issues to suit his purpose best, and generally receives 10 to 
12 per cent, interest on that, as well as on $3,000,000 or 
$4,000,000 of deposits, on all of which he does not pay one 
cent of this government tax. But it is true he pays some on 
what he eais, drinks, wears, chews, smokes or snufifs, and 
fully as much anyway as the Honorable Hobo who slings 
his hammock and quite seraphic looks as he swings a mile a 
minute, between the travelling trucks. But the banker in his 
business consumes the time and services of United States 
courts, judges, marshalls, district attorneys, bank examiners 
and Congress even in making laws to enable him to better 
fleece the public in loaning them their own money in a con- 
fidential way, you know. We suppose that the banker is par 
excellence at working the confidence racket, but with all 
other professional gamblers the confidence game is played 
out. 

INCOME TAX. 

The form or method adopted and applied in levying and 
collecting state, county, etc., tax, complies in a measure with 
the just and equitable principles which should be the guide 
of all governments in the assessing, levying and collection 
for their own support, whose motto should be, Equal burdens 
on all, pro rata according to the cost to the state for the 
preservation of their private property rights, which latter, as 
it now seems, is held in higher estimation than human exist- 

298 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

ence. If the state would apply such a method without par- 
tiality or favor, and strictly enforce the principles here laid 
down together with those in pars. 486-7, etc., it would have 
then as just and honorable a method as has as yet been de- 
vised in the government of human social affairs. 

It may be laid down as a fundamental principle that each 
individual should pay a tax to society for what he con- 
sumes, or more explicitly, on everything which he dedicates 
to his own private use, enjoyment or benefit, or expects the 
same from, and of which he denies society, to share any pos- 
session of or derive any benefits from. According to our 
present social structure with a just and equal distribution 
assessment and levy of tax, it is self evident that no one can 
pay any more tax than that paid on what he rightfully 
consumes. 

The individual builds himself a home to avoid paying rent, 
and the consequent payment of his landlord's taxes. He 
pays taxes on his home for its lawful protection, and all 
other benefits derived from society, as one of his requitals to 
society or the state, and because he denies the public any 
other benefit from it. But if he seeks employment from 
society he endeavors justly to figure for the payment of a^^ 
his expenses, tax included, in the remuneration he asks for 
his services. The mercantile man adds to his first purchase 
price on his goods, his rent, if renting, in which his landlord's 
taxes are included, his own taxes and all other expenses, 
which he considers the cost price, before allowing for, or 
placing the margin for profit ; as do all men who are en- 
gaged in any active operations or occupations who possess 
taxable property, or income of any nature. So that every 
man in business of whatever kind forces the purchaser of 
his wares whether they be opinions in law, straw hats or 
oleomargarine to contribute to the payment of his taxes, 
with increase added. It is true the so-called taxpayer ad- 
vances the money to government, and if in business of any 
conceivable sort, then establishes himself a second-hand tax 
collector. We see, therefore, that the consumer is the funda- 
mental taxpayer and that virtually taxes are paid by none 
other. 

The critical cynic may ask Who pays the taxes of the man 

299 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

who owns his own private dwelling and lOO acres of pleasure 
grounds and $20,000 secreted away and its cache only known 
to himself? It may be said that under peculiar conditions 
he does. But such an individual is without the pale of con- 
sideration or recognition when the assessing of a general 
tax levy is being devised, for were there 75,000 such as he or 
about one in every 1,000 of our population, there would be 
no means for levying taxes by law, nor none to be collected, 
as there would not be a dollar in circulation in the country, 
and our present state of government could not exist. As he 
possesses 1,000 times more than his per capita share of the 
circulating medium that society has devised for the facilita- 
tion of exchanges, not for hoarding, which would in itself 
force the government, that is, if the money volume was regu- 
lated by government, as it should be, and as wisdom and 
equity dictates, to issue $20,000 more money to replace that, 
which they could not account for in their strict and minute 
tally to society of their volume of actual circulating medium, 
and force it to also punish the offending hoarder whenever 
found by fine and imprisonment together with the confisca- 
tion of the now illicit money, by being perverted from per- 
forming its proper functions. 

As to his lands or pleasure grounds, he possesses more 
than his share of arable lands, from which he denies and 
prohibits the public to derive any benefits, the same for his 
house, for which he pays taxes instead of rent. Now in the 
undisputed possession and uninterrupted enjoyments of his 
property, he consumes as much of the protection of the State, 
in its active preservation of society rights, law, and order, as 
does, the possessing taxpayer of any similarly valued lands 
and house, and no more for the peculiar and detrimental 
security he enjoys, than the possessor of so much cultivated 
lands. But he should pay more than twice as much for 
his visible property, the invisible can only be presumption, 
until known or proved, because he deprives humanity of 
sharing or partaking of the potential fruits of his land ; if 
all did likewise the race would soon become extinct. And in 
order to allow him to continue thus, it would be just to 
society and to him, to tax him a sufficient amount to counter- 
act the evil influence of his precedent of indolence and 

300 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

luxury, to enable the state to maintain state institutions for 
the inculcation of ideas of thrift, industry and self-support, 
with its sequel of a durable and healthy state of society, and 
not a support, by perverting the agent of man's imagination 
or society's device, money, from its conceptional intent, or 
by diverting the forces of nature in their willingness to 
perpetuate the race, by retaining inert, an otherwise prolific 
tract of land. So he simply pays taxes on what he con- 
sumes, as he consumes the undivided and undisturbed enjoy- 
ment and benefit he derives from his house and lands. But 
for the very small employment he gives to state servants, 
who interchange with society, what little they receive of his 
taxes, we could pronounce our wealthy misanthrope, a dead 
shot incubus. 

He may have acquired house lands and money honestly, 
but it is doubtful, for, looking at it from a strictly ideal, 
social standpoint, he could hardly succeed that well by 
the mere investment and application of his labor at $3 
per day and its past fruits. And sound social philosophy 
questions the right of any individual, dead or alive, to 
bestow a gift on any other but the state or society, or 
a burden on society, such as an invalid, that in material 
virtue or magnitude will tend or be calculated to render 
the beneficiary an indolent or solely consuming member 
of that society, as even money brought from another 
society has no real value and cannot of itself in any way 
fructify or produce, although exchangeable by law, yet 
the possessor and the money are both a burden on that 
society, since neither produce ; therefore, the question 
still remains. Could he have procured this money hon- 
estly? 

If society in general is taxed for v^hat it produces and 
consumes, then the misanthrope should be taxed with 
arithmetical progression for what he produces, social 
bane, and consumes, for this is the class that never pay to 
society the amount of tax that they justly owe, and this 
is the class that it behooves the producers to cause to 
pay their just share of the burden for the support of the 
government, in order to at least lamely equalize the tax 
on society, for it is evident that society must produce 

301 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

to exist and must labor to produce, and no man can come 
into the possession of money honestly, or of what it is the 
fractionally designated evidence, wealth, without render- 
ing a universally acknowledged equivalent in the way of 
a palpable, tangible, visible or known benefit, even if it- 
was only professional prayers for rain in a long-continued 
drouth. Indeed, he may be said to come into its posses- 
sion legally, but never with social justice and justness, 
either law, charity or neither. 

As all wealth, even that procured through the gestation 
of animals, cannot reproduce, replenish, renovate or in- 
crease itself to that degree of excellence necessary for a 
favorable conservation of the human race without the 
application by man of mental and physical labor, in connec- 
tion with the tangible, though undefined and indefinable, 
forces of nature ; and as fruitful, individual effort cannot 
exist without knowledge and will-power, therefore in con- 
nection with man the word labor contains the full signifi- 
cance of both physical and mental productive exertion. 
Since labor, in connection with its past-created fruits, not 
its impotential representative, is all that it is possible for 
man to apply in the creation of all production, and as far 
as it comes within the province of the mortal to construct, 
replenish or create; it may be laid down as an apodictic 
axiom that labor creates or produces all wealth ; therefore, 
in some manner or other, at some time or other, labor 
pays all taxes and supports the whole human race. So a 
sane society, desiring to be just, should ever and forever 
banish all drones, for they are the inveterate germ of all 
social disease. 

As labor produces all wealth, and that through the 
operation of our unjust, biased and inequitable, economic 
laws it possesses the least, it would be both just and 
consistent to lighten the brden of the support of govern- 
ment from off of the laborer until a more equal distribu- 
tion of wealth would be the result, when each would then 
subscribe a more equal share; this should be done as 
quickly as possible by making those contribute more than 
they do now who are constantly consuming the products 
of labor, but who never contribute to the real or actual 

302 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

supply or increase, but who, through the operation of our 
eccentric, ecumenical, economic laws, have legally seques- 
tered the Active measuring factor of the products of labor, 
which they have never created. It would not only be a 
just and honest mode of procedure to cause them to pay 
that portion righteously deemed commensurate with 
their cost to society, but it might be a propitious, prim- 
ordial, politic move to set about counteracting the ap- 
parent, retropulsive retreat of the laborer to that prime- 
val doctrine, of which he must be the living illustration — 
the survival of the fittest ! It might be wise to remember 
that it is an innate characteristic of man to bend to a 
certain load of impositions, but when that degree is 
exceeded, that the greater the retroflexion, the more ter- 
rific the resilience. 

In the hope of arriving at justice to all and special 
exemptions to none, we should abolish the internal rev- 
enue tax as now levied and raised and establish in its 
stead a graduated income tax system altogether, public, 
apt, direct, certain and plain, so that evasion would be 
onerous and difficult. Each adult whose income amount- 
ed to $200 to pay direct to the collector of graduated 
income tax or revenue, i per cent, per annum ; from $200 
up to $500, i^ per cent.; from $500 up to $1,000, 2 per 
cent. ; from $1,000 to $1,500, 2^ per cent, ; from $1,500 up 
to $2,000, 3 per cent. ; from $2,000 up to $2,500, 3^ per 
cent. ; from $2,500 to $3,000, 4 per cent. ; from $3,000 to 
$3,500, 4^ per cent. ; from $3,500 to $4,000, 5 per cent., 
and 6 per cent, on all incomes from $4,000 to $10,000, and 
I per cent, extra added for every $5,000 or fraction thereof 
over the first $10,000. To say the least, this tax would 
be fair and just, and then neither dishonest rich nor hon- 
est poor could find any fault with it that would not apply 
to all with equal force and its principal fault, of course, 
would be justice or equity. 

Through some unforeseen cause, if this assessment was 
found not to be sufficient, the assessment could easily be 
increased; but such an assessment on a $15,000,000,000 
annual increase, in taxing a per capita mean of the above 
figures, would amount to $600,000,000, which should be 

303 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS ' 

■j 
ample for years to come. By this means every individual i 
would pay a constant, arbitrable and authentic publicj 
contribution, in accordance with the revenues or benefits ^ 
he received from society, and the all-possible protection 
he received on his property. He would simply pay for the 
support of his government what any member of any com- 
munity, religion or government should do, to whose law^s 
or tenets and the acknowledged benefits, by continued 
active participation, or even presence, he subscribes, with- 
out logical or just complaint. As to all others, the sooner 
that they pack their duds and slink, the better for all con- 
cerned. Consider this due notice, for we mean it! 

Should it, by some peculiar method of reasoning, be 
deemed wise and prudent to continue the collection of 
the internal revenue, besides tne fearless, open, direct 
income tax, then when collected it should be applied 
to the support of the public schools, and to grant a pen- 
sion of $100 per year to every worthy indigent over sixty 
years of age, who worked through life while others reaped 
the benefit of his toil, and to those, also, incapacitated 
from labor by accident or disease by them unavoidable. 
Then the drunkard would assist in the education of his 
children and help to support his worn-out or decrepit 
parent or relation. By this mode we would be returning 
in part to them by law what was fleeced from them 
through the operation of our cruel law. It would not be 
charity, but a part of their just dues returned for the 
benefits we and our posterity can enjoy from their past 
improving effort. As, for instance, anyone who by his 
labor aided in building the Union Pacific line of railroad 
should never be allowed to sufifer the pangs of htmger in 
old age, Avhile the railroad, or all the avenues it opened up 
for the sustenance of future generations exist. 

But the syntetic cynic sneeringly remarks : Oh, but 
they were paid for their work all it was worth ! No ! 
Never can labor be fully requited for its effort while ever 
that improvement exists, although it may have been 
cajolingly appeased at that time by receiving stereotyped, 
fictive evidences of man's imagination, which can never 
justly balance both will-power and physical force until 
water runs up hill. 

304 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

Such a distribution of the internal revenue would act 
\ as an incentive to honest endeavor during the years of 
j labor and doubly serve as a stumbling block in the path 
I of the demon of suicide. Away with that cold, formal 
j and gigantic thorn of charity, the almshouse, ever through 
I life cajoling, jeering, mocking that misfortunate, misgov- 
, erned, misguided, misrated, misjudged toiler, ever to him 
I the emblem of left-handed, life-chilling charity and de- 
i spised dependence, which both, in health, he utterly de- 
I tests, and now to him in advanced years, the madly has- 
i tening force of the dissolution of his waning independ- 
ence and spirit, ever impelling on to the inevitable col- 
lapse, a premature, if not a suicide's grave. 



305 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 



PART VIII. 



INTEREST BANKS. 



Two kinds of interest or tax on thrift. — Judas Iscariot as banker. — 
Is interest constitutional? — "Declaration of Independence" from 
banking. — Guiltless Moses. — Beauties of interest. — Philosopher's 
stones. — One dollar at 2% a month. — Isocheimal two-threaded yarn. 
— Excuse for interest. — Honest money. — Law of association. — Instru- 
ment of association.— Should those old ideas guide us now ? — Another 
excuse for interest or how to justify it. — National bank baby. — 
Banks increasing similarly as is decreasing all real value and virtue. — 
Their capital increases in unison with the farm's price. — All balances 
beautifully. — Balance all. — Turtle steak. — Supply and demand. — 
When Bacchus gets his gun off. — Old school primer. — The alderman. 
— Substance not shadow. — Four supply and demand axioms. — All 
animals associative. — Duty of temporarily delegated government. — 
Bond, bank bill and mortgage. — How the dollar represents labor 
power. — Curse of interest. — State interest laws of, inconsistent, in- 
constant, incipient, insane, legislators. — Consistent justice, sweet- 
scented jewel. — Regulate all profit by law. — Protective tariff accused 
of interest curse. — Another method to justify interest. 

Interest may be said to be of two kinds, as far as hon- 
esty is concerned; first, there is a dishonest interest; and, 
second and last, there is a diabolically dishonest inter- 
est. The first is that dishonest interest that' the law of a 
state, no matter how rotten it may be, that it will not 
stand godfather for. This rate is generally quoted at 5 
per cent, per month, and has this redeeming feature about 
it — that it may some day wake up the lethargic sucker 
to the consciousness of what a barefaced robbery interest 
is ; that, instead of the borrower being paid for being re- 
sponsible for its safety and certain return, without any 
risk to the lender, or charge for the taxes idle money 
should bear, or instead of recompense for using that other- 
wise idle, legal credit for the exchange of labor in the pro- 
duction of the absolute necessities for the preservation 
of the race, lo ! and behold ! he is charged interest for his 
beneficial activity — for using the fanciful, impotential 
photographof man's imagination, still worse perverted by 

306 



J 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

the collusive, delusive cogitations of innate thieves or 
arrant knaves from its conceptional and fundamental 
function and intent. 

SHYLOCK-S RACKET. 

The second and last interest is that diabolically hedged 
and blindly blinking, unconstitutional state law, as ridicu- 
lous as different and as fiendish as inconstant, that semi- 
legalized though justly illicit tax on industry and thrift 
for the support of inimical idleness and insatiable de- 
baucher}^, authority for which is not to be found in our 
Constitution, nor in any law ever framed creating money 
where the nation ever had an average experience or en- 
lightenment; which has been cursed before and since 
Moses was knee high to a duck, and will ever be so as 
long as the true philanthropist exists or the duck quacks 
in defending the infernal recognition of such a robbing 
scheme. In this connection we should remember that 
decades of centuries after Moses retired from the repudia- 
tion business — not the banking business, mind you, and 
don't forget it — that if Judas Iscariot or the scarlet-robed 
usurer had put out at the exorbitant interest of 4 pei" cent, 
the thirty pieces of silver, the legal tender value of which 
was three cents each, or a bank capital of ninety cents 
and go into business next day, it would now amount to 
$215,681,440,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000. Now a 
chunk of gold this size would be 17,680 times larger than 
our whole globe, Judas Iscariot & Co., and all ! How is that 
for' that inveigling, interloping invention of the foster 
papa of that innocent infant, interest? 

As the dishonesty and injustice of interest has never 
been questioned by anyone ever rising to the dignity of 
being worthy of serious or lengthy refutation, the wavering 
question now arises, Is interest constitutional? It — the 
Constitution — is silent on the question; it is^ true the 
power is given Congress to coin money, etc., issue bills 
of credit or borrow money; but where does the word 
interest come in? Congress can issue paper money con- 
stitutionally. It can legalize or cause the evidences of 
debt to be a full legal tender in the liquidation of contracts 

307 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

or indebtedness; then is this not money for money? 
Whether money as interest was to be paid on those debts 
for contracting a loan from foreigners, or whether a com- 
mercial treaty was to be the recompense, we are left in 
doubt or to surmise, as well as to whether the intention 
was to only borrow from Americans only, and to pay 
them with legal tender evidences of the debt, such as 
United States Treasury notes, that have been issued regu- 
larly at intervals since the foundation of our Republic, 
and all evidences of a national debt are untaxable by the 
states, this would seem to be the onh^ general recom- 
pense intended in lieu of interest. 

The latter intention seems to be the one entertained by 
the fathers of the country, with their but yet dawning 
knowledge and conviction of the falsity of the intrinsic 
value of money, which then was but rarely questioned 
by the general public ; because we find that those fathers, 
still further enlightened on the subject of finance by expe- 
rience, if nothing more, showing and proving their horror 
and contempt for banks and interest and like institutions 
of reality for gall, or something for nothing, by passing, in 
1793, a resolution prohibiting anyone, owning all or a 
part in, or in any way connected with banks, etc., from 
having or holding a seat in Congress, and this was passed 
by men who assisted in framing the Constitution. Not 
only now is it high time for Congress to promulgate to 
the world their declaration of ''banking independence," 
pronouncing as illegal and unconstitutional any or all 
interest for the use of money, except that paid to govern- 
ment for cost of issue and regulation, but also as the right 
of invalidating certain contracts has been reserved from 
the states, this power must reside in Congress ; therefore, 
is it not high old time that debts unjustly and dishonestly 
contracted should be dealt with similarly as Moses did 
with their early predecessing counterpart, by repudiating 
them? Poor old Moses would not be a bad criterion 
to be guided by ! It seems to to us, for we never heard 
anything wrong about the man, only that he was the 
very first man to break all the commandments of stone. 
But then, you know, he was so mad at the golden calf. 
Now what harm was that? 

308 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

A few more of the beauties of interest should ever be 
kept before the mind. Suppose you put out $i at 7 
per cent, interest for 100 years, it will amount to $868 in 
that time. Now, if you put your labor in with $1 worth of 
material of any kind, the result of your labor will have 
to yield $9.68 per year for you to receive $1 a year to 
eat on and $8.68 to pay for interest. This is why the 
interest payer will always be poor. And why do you 
pay interest on a legal, circulating, uncreative agent of 
credit or a receipt only for value furnished, which agent 
or receipt you yourself have created by your common 
consent? Or, suppose you put out $1 at 12 per cent., 
the present average rate, for 100 years, it would amount 
to only $84,675. Can your principal stand that? Now 
can you see why the toiler, during a thrifty, industrious 
life, cannot accumulate a competence? Now can you not 
see that interest is the sum total of all the banging, blight- 
ing bane of all pure social science ? Whenever you can recon- 
cile your idea, that is expressed in $1, with that other 
admiringly confusing idea of $84,675, then, lucky lad! 
bully for you ! You struck it immensely rich ! You have 
found the philosopher's stones ! ! ! Oh, we be goll darned 
squashed, if you haven't ! That's them, sure ! Now we 
suppose that you will pay interest right along now, as 
before. 

But, again, once more, for those who have not found 
them yet. Let us suppose that you borrowed $1 for 100 
years, at 2 per cent, a month, and millions of people 
to-day and every day know and pay that rate right here in 
the United States for the use of their common, legal- 
value-given, circulating medium, or 24 per cent, a year ; 
this would amount to the paltry pittance of $2,551,799,- 
404, or more money than the brassy British Islands and 
the United States possess altogether, counting all kinds 
of money, even cents, farthings, forged notes and counter- 
feit bank notes combined. Will you continue paying in- 
terest with the reality of those figures fleetly flitting 
through your faltering, fenny, fainting brain; or should 
you will to pay it without protest as heretofore, then move 
right along, dear angel, we will rest and carp no more 

309 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

(until we wash down the poisonous pill with lager-beer 
galore. — Schiller). 

Should you elect to calmly continue in this bedraggling, 
miry, chaotic rut, that the Israelites of old were drag- 
gled through until Moses found for them a dry trail to 
single-file out, then, we will really believe that you have 
not a much keener sense of right and wrong, and possess 
a similar amount of isocheimah cheeky, mental crewel 
as the man who precipitately rushes into print on conjur- i 
ing up a half-reasoned idea, in the hope of sprouting an i 
ism or schism, so that he may be notched high up on that ' 
rootless flagstaff of sophistry ; such a one as might be i 
heard noisily asserting that usury was wrong, but inter- j 
est was right, or vice versa, belaboring the mind with | 
scraps of bond chains into such a suppurating fever as 
to swamp all previous impressions of equity, and totally 
drowning the knowledge that princinle once wrong can never ; 
be right or just, and once just or light can never be wrong 
or unjust. When all parties are agreed in judgment, ' 
which may right a wrong and which may wrong a right, i 
the appreciation of either being mostly formed by the ' 
airy, volatile opinion of that gray, pulpy matter called i 
the brain, but the righteous principle forever doth remain, j 
If the principle is wrong in essence, human reasoning ' 
powers can devise no brain scheme to right it in its appli- ■ 
cation to human affairs of justice. If man was endowed : 
— that is, legislators or representative men—- with the j 
powers of prolonging life or charming off the necessity for j 
sleep, or aliment, or all indispensable human requisites, | 
and could concentrate those powers at stated periods 
into issues of money that advanced in immanent powers 
with age, then, and then only, would interest or increase 
have a right of being; but up to date we have not heard 
that such powers were conferred on politicians, or we 
would make a record-smashing race for constable next 
fall ; yes, sir, in every district in the United States ! 

It is argued by some writers more notorious than note- 
worthy that, because government pays interest on na- 
tional bonds, that interest is therefore legal, and should 
be constitutional. If Congress in using their powers or 
prerogatives granted by the Constitution enact a law or 

310 



j PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

I devise a scheme for the payment of interest, or any other 
orphan robbery which works a hardship on the greater 
number, and to the inequitable or unrighteous benefit of 
the few, then that law is essentially unconstitutional, 
illicit, cruel and criminal, and continues bearing usurious 
interest in evil while allowed to remain unrepealed. The 
government of a country has better credit than any of its 
integral parts and can always use that credit, instead of 
borrowing what it can create, and by not borrowing it 
forces the money offered, when no interest is allowed 
thereon, into active industry, there to produce in connec- 
tion with active labor power the only increase possible 
and just, which it previously sought to obtain by cowling 
itself in cowhide, cunning, candied sophistry. This is the 
labor power, as imperishable and indestructible as the 
race itself, we so often hear those loud-whining and whin- 
ing whelps of unconscious cuckoos or parrots of assump- 
tive philosophy so lamentably deploring as lost, since 
they themselves will not toil, as they despise vulgar, phys- 
ical labor, and will but feed and fly on the fulgent finesse 
of what they are please to plagiarize and proclaim social 
association, fearful lest they should run short of satisfy- 
ing their gluttonous appetite or satiate their debauching 
propensities ; if a cohort of the toiling masses stopped 
short to hack at the ever-tightening chains of oppression 
and wrong, digging into their enervating flesh, or to take 
and educational emetic to vomit the fouling stains of their 
masters' tyranny from their over-generous, honest souls. 
We sometimes find some writers, as garrulous as gusty, 
as volatile as voltaic, and as light as ludicrous, we would 
say, was not the subject and conditions so serious and of 
life-dealing importance to all the masses honestly inclined 
and of death-dealing or labor significance to the indo- 
lent drones who have thus far fattened on the fruits of 
others' toil, claiming that interest for the use of money is 
as just as interest or rent for a house, a farm, etc. The 
question of rightful ownership remaining latent, we will 
say that the house or farm is valued at $3,000, each con- 
sisting of the aggregated improvements of 1,000 average 
days' labor of eight hours per day of $3 per day. In 
either of those properties we have the true and actual 

311 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

crystallization of labor power, force or value, which can 
only render those potential elements conducive of actual 
benefit to man. The house affords him shelter from the 
inclemence of the elements and the intrusion of inter- 
lopers. This structure of itself furnishes an actual neces- 
sity to man. The crystallization of the labor power 
alone has rendered the farm prolific of man's transmuta- 
tive, physical necessities. This is of real, actual value 
to man. 

But, you say, money built the house. No; it was labor 
power that built the house. Yes, but money paid the 
laborers who built it. Yes. But now the scientific or 
true social definition of honest money in an abstract, 
strict and undisputed sense is, it is a national, legal tender, 
interchangeable, token certificate or receipt for actual 
value received. If the builder or owner honestly came 
by his $3,000, he rendered i,ooo days* labor or its actual 
equivalent to society, and still his house is the crystal- 
lization of labor power, and represents $3,000, tokens or 
certificates or receipts,- for actual value. But what of the 
shadow or certificate? He now sells it for $3,000. He 
has exchanged it for its legal photograph. It is not crys- 
tallized labor power ; it is impotential ; it cannot increase 
itself ; neither can labor increase it ; the exchange of labor 
may add more tokens to the number; it has no poten- 
tial power, or labor could increase it ; it has only the impo- 
tential legal power or figurative force given it by law, 
which is fixed and cannot increase, except through the 
operations of that law that created it; it does not give 
him shelter ; it does not yield him the fruits of the earth ; 
he can purchase either, but such a part has left him for- 
ever; he can purchase another house with it by exchang- 
ing it with someone willing to exchange Exactly so. 
This interchangeable function is all the power or value 
that the law has given, or can legitimately give, to money. 

The law cannot give real value to money; if it could, 
then it might rightfully bear interest. The law can only 
give to money an abstract, ideal value, which is a nominal 
measuring value, which can only be increased or de- 
creased by ruling, regulating or changing its ideal meas- 
ure, either direct by law specially, or indirect by regula- 

312 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

tion of its volume. It is impossible for mortal to create 
real power, value or force, or power of increase in any 
impotential device or design of the brain, and no value 
whatever but the nominal legal obligatory decree to gov- 
ern all those subscribing to that law can legitimately be 
given by any law or government, and only that expressly 
stipulated by the governed. And no element or force in 
nature can produce a fruitful, healthy or fully desirable 
increase without being allied, aided or assisted with or by 
actual labor power ; then this power is the foundation 
and culmination of all social association, necessity, com- 
forts, happiness and progress of all kinds. 

But even some writers of enviable renown, in their zeal 
for their honestly conceived and prompted notions, have 
placed what they term the law of association as the great- 
est need of man. If by that was meant, from an educa- 
tional and its cumulatively comforting standpoint, then 
rt would be partially true ; but man always was, is and 
will be an associative animal, like all other animals (see 
paragraph 689) are, although nature has provided them 
with life-preserving necessities that we now find man 
devoid of. It is an innate attribute of man, or a compul- 
sory requirement of those secret forces of nature that he 
must obey and cannot control and, if despised, results in 
extinction. Such association can be but incidentally im- 
proved by utilizing the past experience of others, and by 
no sound method of reasoning can it be contorted into 
an excuse for interest on money, or for its issue, except 
to and by government. They ramble on through realms 
of induction, from which they descend so confused that 
they even go so far astray as to assert that the powers 
or faculties of thought or ideas and language are derived 
only from the law of association, but to forget to — just 
casually, you know, or incidentally — mention from what 
source came the first thoughts, ideas or expression of 
such. 

Thought or idea and language are indefinable attributes 
of man, which may be termed the soul, and similar with 
that associative, impelling force, reason or instinct not 
artificial or acquired, but an innate attribute, and no 
amount of mysticism or mystically ambiguous expressions 

313 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

of man can transform or reduce and take credit for so 
doing this natural law of association into' that cunningly 
devised, experimentally incidental and additionally manu- 
factured law of association, or set it up as such in their 
vague attempts in conjuring some logical excuse for bol- 
stering up that caustic cancer of national or social associa- 
tion, interest, or corporate banks. 

Again we are told that money is the instrument of this 
association. In dealing in social or scientific problems 
the most necessary requisite is to have a strict regard 
for words and their exact definition. This word, instru- 
ment, is both inappropriate and serves to mislead, which 
may not have been the intention. Its preferable or prin- 
cipal signification being a tool, utensil or machine, which 
might leave the impression on the plastic mind of the in- 
cautious student that the word implied that the virtue 
or value was in the material of which the piece was made 
or composed, being either or a mechanical or intrinsic 
value. If matter or the material of which the token was 
composed was intended to be expressed as conveying 
the intended idea, then instrument would be a happy 
conveyancer. But if the idea of the instrumental-piece- 
evidence of the law, and that law the expressed consensus 
of the public mind or will, as impressed on the token, as 
their apt or felicitous agent, messenger or token-witness 
of their circulating medium, legally and universally au- 
thorized and recognized, as the doubly obligatory can- 
cellor of all debts and the national, legal receipt for its 
figuratively measuring of actual value received, then the 
word instrument would have a clouded or ambiguous 
meaning, as this piece of steel we now write with has not 
the power or intrinsic attribute of expressing our ideas, 
although it is now, in a small degree, instrumental in 
so doing, just as a piece of gold, silver, copper, etc., goose- 
quill, graphite (see paragraphs 215-16), etc., would be, 
but the power behind the throne of expression is the 
thought, will or mind force, indefinable by, and beyond 
the conception of, all men. 

No doubt but that these classes of writers referred to 
in paragraphs 658-61 were impelled by pure motives and 
honest convictions, when all earnestly, and some sacredly^ 

314 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

were advocating, propagating and propaganding their 
multifarious and interconflicting theories as to what man 
and nation should do, and how all should act, and how in 
their commercial transactions and social intercourse be 
governed; and that they ardently labored, desired and 
hoped for the elevation of man, partly by their aid, to 
that plane, obviously assigned him by his God — the happy 
state of universal peace and omniparity. For all of whom 
the writer of to-day, while excluding their comtemptibly 
copying and imitative, automatic cuckoo-striking-time- 
servers, who constantly try to twist and pervert, by 
basest literal calumny, the originally honest idea of the 
so-called masters of old, should entertain nothing but the 
most profound respect, honest admiration and sincere 
thanks, when forced to take issue with them, or even 
moved to pity at the thought of their comparatively som- 
bre surroundings or conditions, for their work so nobly 
done, in magnifying their ideas, by select and lucid ex- 
pression, so that we can readily grasp the benefit of 
their thoughts, w^hich shall ever shine as stars in the 
relatively sombre twilight given them. 

But are we ever to be guided by those thoughts or 
ideas of men who never realized, or of those who scarcely 
ever tasted, any of the most luscious fruits of freedom? 
Or shall we rest our oars on that now stagnant water, 
the evaporation from which then generated the ideas of 
the v^riter, v^hich waters were heated by the animal pas- 
sions of the oppressed, inflamed by the yet burning, active 
treatment of his British-tyrant-masters? Or shall we 
never prune the sprout of Hght and . liberty set out by 
the primal planters of the intellectual tree of equality, and 
let it go uncared for, to be smothered by the surrounding, 
profuse, fast-growing tare sown by tyrants? Or shall 
we not dare to improve on the ideas evolved in the age 
of straw-saddled, burro-backed locomotion, with the 
rider's feet plowing and connecting his thoughts with the 
'field of drudging, laborious toil? 

Or shall we select and train from them the brightest, 
clearest, noblest and most fruitful of equity, so as to 
have them sound and act in harmonious unity with those 
ideas evolved in the age of the palace car, with the rider's 

315 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

feet in touch with the electric sparks from the rails, con- 
necting him and conducting his thoughts, ideas and hopes 
to fascinatingly contemplate, behold and converse with 
the higher forces or elements, the beauties of perfect 
equality, and serenely meditate on the perfect adapta- 
tion of one to all and all to one, where only, as yet, per- 
fect equal rights exist, in that celestial ocean of man's 
breathing-life-spirit, in which each atom is welcomed by 
the same warm, smiling, loving sunbeam, and also by 
the same immutable order of the God of all, Nature, is 
chilled by the same condensing, cooling power of all ani- 
mate or inanimate matter, and is banged by the same 
dynamic force? Here is perfect harmony and peace, as 
no special privileges are given to individual atoms, and 
each voluntarily performs its predestined duty. Here 
there is no compulsory, damnable, devilish, dronish, de- 
ceitful tax or interest on atomic toil or duty, but each 
atom is bathed in the rapturous smiles of that power than 
all forces of nature known or conceivable to man and 
connecting, ordering, blending all, still higher ! 

But to-day, on descending from those beauteous realms 
of joyous thought, what does observing man behold when 
forced by his long aerial journey to seek to satisfy the 
heaven divined, natural cravings of the flesh? He beholds 
that man, even bank presidents, railroad magnates, stock- 
future-speculators, real-estate-booming-fakirs and all that 
great horde of corpuscular cormorants,, eat the fruits of 
others' labor power, and not their own! And he beholds 
man, who has been impartially enjoined by nature to 
labor from the cradle to the grave, that he might eat, 
and this deluded, downtrodden class of man compelled 
by man's evil genius to double his task of toil that the 
drone may live ! And, on emerging from the railroad 
inn table he beholds that castellated or stately structure 
created by labor power from the stone and grit of the 
earth, now grimly grinning at and mocking into fury its 
outcast, wandering creator, the tramp ! What wonder if 
his righteous frenzy by him was cast against that ghastly 
frowning pile of rock, there to explode and return its 
every part to its original atomic - condition ! It is the 
bank ! 

316 



i 



I PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

j If the representatives of the people will be as easily 
I purchased to work in the interest of the idle or money 
' class as they have been for the past thirty years, and 
j propose that the government be a father or a paternal 
i government for bankers only, then the following sugges- 
I tion might enable them to forestall nature, and not only 
start off square with her, but get a head and neck in ad- 
[ vance : Let the government issue plenty of money to the 
j banks and compel them to loan it on good security, valued 
I at twice the amount of the loan, the. government to charge 
I the banks i per cent, for the money and compel them to 
j loan it all, up to such an amount, that everyone applying 
i with security should all be supplied, the money or bills 
each and all to increase at the rate of 2 per cent, per 
annum from date of issue, the interest or increase to be 
paid to the bankers on the issue, one year from date 
thereof, by the government, by another issue of new 
notes of a similar kind, bearing 2 per cent, increase, so 
that when the borrower came back at the end of a year 
with the money, lo ! he found that, by virtue of the law 
that the money had had an increase (not young ones) of 
full-fledged money production that paid his interest. Then 
you would see the banker hustling money into circula- 
tion, for then the more he loaned, the more interest he 
received. If the government charged the banks 2 or 3 
per cent., the banks to charge 4 or 6, and receive the same 
by a new issue of similar notes, this latter amount might 
keep pace with the increasing volume of business, besides 
pay all revenue required for the support of government. 
If it ever become possible to have too much full legal 
tender money in circulation — which can never be — com- 
modities will rise in price, as would honor and virtue ; 
that is all the harm it could do; but its vacillant meas- 
uring qualities would remain the same as now, fancifully 
gauged only by the volume in circulation, and that no one 
could be found to pay interest any more, then cease the 
further issue of new notes, retire the tired, worn-out bank- 
ers on a pension of $100 per year during life and a re- 
served seat in heaven ! The first supply or issue, as well 
as the subsequent issues of bank interest, would still be 
due, as the government issue was paid out for services, 

317 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

but what was due could be called square, as it still bore 
interest, which would be paid in the next world, anyway. 
Now you can chew on that chestnut burr for the next 
century, if you choose,- which you will find to have simi- 
lar, indefinable, intrinsic attributes, as the famed Keely 
cure. 

Let us inquire about the baby that was born when 
we were quite striplings — it's known by the name of 
national bank. In 1793 there were only three national 
banks in the United States, and then the stringent resolu- 
tion passed, disqualifying anyone connected with a bank 
from holding a seat in Congress. In 1892, or 100 years 
from the former date, they had increased to 3,701, or an 
increased 1,233-fold, while the population only increased 
about eighteenfold. In 1872 there were 1,832; in 1882 
there were 2,197, o^ ^.n increase of less than 20 per cent.; 
in 1892, there was an increase of 60 per cent, and over, 
or 3,701. It must be a paying business. In 1872 their 
capital was $465,676,023, on which the total net earnings 
was $58,075,430, or 12.47 P^i" cent. In 1882 their capital 
was nearly $474,000,000, and their net earnings about 
$53,333,000, or an interest profit of 11.25 P^^ cent. In 
1892 their capital was a little over $679,000,000, and their 
net earnings over $66,500,000, or an interest profit of a 
fraction less than 10 per cent. But it should be remem- 
bered these are their own manipulated figures, for the 
bank examiners are merely the bankers' tools. We find 
that in 1891, about similar to other previous years, that 
their bank capital was a little over $660,000,000, and their 
total net earnings over $75,750,000, or an interest profit 
of over 11.47 P^^ cent., or $11.47 o^ ^^^ $100. 

In the twenty-one years commencing 1872 and ending 
1892 the average yearly capital was about $525,500,000, on 
which the average net earnings were nearly $55,000,000, or 
a twenty-one year average profit or interest on the legal 
phantom of man's imagination of 10.46 per cent., which 
stereotyped phantom called for certain enumerated 
amounts by law of real, actual value, which cost actual 
labor power expenditure in connection with the free dona- 
tions of all other potential forces of nature. So much in 

318 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

the battle for cunning- thought versus honest thought and 
action ! 

On this average capital of national banks only of $525,- 
500,000, v^^hich ranged from $454,200,000 in 1880, the low- 
est, to $679,000,000 in 1892, the highest, there was a net 
earnings or clear profit of $1,150,000,000 for the twenty- 
one years, or over 219 per cent, of the capital. Well, is 
this capital worn out, like the farm, in twenty-one years' 
successive, similar crops? Or is it decayed by the action 
of the elements, like the shivering factory or the rotting 
workshop? Or is it bent with age and toil and worn 
out in the cruel struggle for a bare existence? Or its eyes 
dimmed and weakened with outward watching for the 
hireling, tyrant boss, and with burning, racking thought 
from within of that abominably close uncertainty of to- 
morrow's husky crust? No, my dear, gentle lady ! I give 
you my word of honor (what?!) that the mon-ey to-day is 
not only as good as ever, but will buy more vinaceous 
fruits, victuals, victims, vows and virtue than before, and 
its vivid, vulpine, vulturine vulgarity not only viable, but 
ever on the increase or interest. 

It is worthy of notice to remark at what rate those 
banks increased in number in the past two decades end- 
ing in 1892. In- 1872 -they numbered 1832; in 1882 they 
had increased 365, or one for every ten days in the ten 
years there was vomited from the plutonic regions a Cer- 
berus-headed viper to sting the fair form of the blind, 
impartial Goddess of Justice into this land of a Jackson 
and a Lincoln! Or they numbered, in 1882, 2,197, or 
nearly 20 per cent, increase of a mephitic malaria for the 
inhalation of American heedless freemen! From 2,197 in 
1882 they had increased to 3,701 in 1892, or an increase 
of about 68^ per cent., or more than one in every two and 
one-half days there was cast amid an eruption of stifling, 
sulphurous fumes another merciless, liberty-murdering 
monster to poison the atmosphere and choke the spirit 
of liberty, which, alas ! has, deplorably and too plainly seen, 
resulted in 68^ per cent, loss of the sense of equity and 
Republican vitality among the worshippers of the golden 
calf idolatry. 

Let us see how what they call their capital fared in 

319 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

the past few years. In 1882 it was nearly $474,000,000; in 
1892 it was $679,000,000, or an increase of over 43 per 
cent. With another increase of $105,000,000, or over 22 
per cent, of what they call surplus or undivided profits 
— that is, the money that they have not been able to 
squander, moping around and blankly gazing at the tot- 
tering, crumbling, bat-horned monuments to mediaeval 
oppression, tyranny and wrong, and in purchasing those 
dear and sacredly kissed relics of that savave religion of 
man-idolatry in Europe, which monuments and relics ever 
shine in their eyes as moons and stars from a midnight 
earth. Not including the 10 per cent, annual dividends 
and without reckoning their investments in your mort- 
gage-foreclosed fences, fields, farms and childbirth homes 
at thirty cents on the dollar, this increase alone in ten 
years would amount to 65 per cent, in national bank 
capital or bank, farm, or factory of chimerical, swaggering 
wind. 

Please tell us, by return mail, has your 160 acres of 
river bottom or fertile, rolling land actually increased 
since, say, 1884, or ten years, in mony price or actual, 
positive market value, any more than 65 per cent., al- 
though you may have added to your capital or deposited 
therein 1,000 labor-power-real-intrinsic-fruitful dollars 
every year for each of those ten years? Or, rather, to be 
candid, has not your positive, intrinsic-value farm de- 
creased or fell 50 per cent, in market value or in the esti- 
mation of all actual buyers or appraisers except the tax 
assessor? Oh, yes! But we heard you sa}^ The farm is 
ours. It's -not for sale. Mind you own business ! Thank 
God ! Some of our greatest failures are our inordinate 
desire to be as patriotic and obedient as the American 
farm is immovable ; and that the American youth will see 
to it that, no matter who or what the owner may be, that 
farm will remain ever within the confines of our United 
States Republic. See ! So we will let the farm rest and 
recuperate for next year's crop, while you old fogies can 
keep on voting as your, fitful stubbornness dictates. Has 
the just and righteous interest or yield of the farm kept 
pace, or fell behind and lost the cadenced forward march! 

320 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

guide centre ! run, march ! of the fraudulent, thieving yield 
!i of the bank? 

I On inquiry, we find that your wheat was bought and 
I sold in 1884, many years ago, for $1.07. In 1894 did you 
j get anything over fifty cents per bushel? Did this drop 
i of over 100. per cent, of its present price get. far ahead 
j of the purchasing power of the banker's bushel yield, or 
I $1.07 of 1884 or 1894? One thousand of which in '94 
I would purchase your two-thousand farm of '84. Now, we. 
j wish to be obliging and get into your good graces again, 
so we must respectfully give this full reckoning of both 
harmonious calculations, and we must remark that we 
think it quite simple. Well, his dollar of '84 is now worth 
two, and your bushel of wheat now would have sold for 
two times its present price in '84. So, if you have not 
got ahead, you must be even, anyway. Now, two and 
one would be only three ; but two and two are four. Now 
we are that far. Well, then, if three is odd, why, four is 
even! Understand? So let us start new. You have not 
fared so very bad with your cotton as one might suppose 
at a first careless glance, and it can be squared up nicely 
and poised as evenly as the chemist's select beam and 
rider, or as keenly balanced as that chronometrical, indi- 
cating, alternating flywheel on that concentric, cursive 
cycle of eternity, the elastic, spiral lever of our jaded,, 
senily silenced Waterbury. 

In 1872 it was only 19.3 cents per pound. In 1873 it 
was only 18.8 cents per pound; but, of course, this one- 
half cent difference will not tally, so you will please re- 
member that you have perfect liberty to charge this nocent 
irregularity to that seemingly past, but still, perpetually 
living and justly celebrated black — black' — black Friday. 
But now we come to. where the fractions of figures, in tan- 
gled, crooked marks agree, and in harmony blend their 
powers to act by smilingly smoothing the thorny, tortu- 
ous trail traced out for he who toils to travel. In 1874 
it was bought and sold at the more agreeable figures of 

15.4 cents per pound. In 1884 it was bought and sold at 

10.5 cents per pound. At this price the planter only lost 
one-third of the former price, or about one-half of that, of 
the then '84 price. Now the $1 bought only one-half more 

321 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS ' 

I 
than it could in 1874, or the one-third of that it now' 
(1884) could buy, which would only be one-half a pound | 
to the pound in either case, so to each belonged one-third , 
and one-half. Now, who has got the best of that? In 1 
1893-4 the planter got seven cents per pound, or three ■ 
and one-half cents on the outside of ten and one-half cents, ■ 
or only lost, as before, one-third of the price of '84, or only j 
about one-half of the present price, and the $1 bought only ! 
one-half more than it could in '84, or the one-third of \ 
that it could now buy, and only one-half pound to the ! 
pound more, as before. 

Now, don't the planter get two-halves and two-thirds? 
Very well, then. To the dollar belongs the two other 
halves and two-thirds. Now each has two twos and two 
and any multiple of .two is even, and the one planter 
and the one dollar is two! So here is everything nicely 
dovetailed up. Now, where is the blatant inflationist of a 
depreciated currency, good only in the United States, who 
can find any fault with that plainly solved problem of 
back-action, bank-interest mathematics, and positively 
proved by the inexorable and immutable law of supply 
and demand. Having got that all straightened out, now 
all hands have a turtle stake (steak) for lunch from me! 

Who hollered mud? 

. j 

SUPPLY AND DEMAND. j 

1 

We've jnst asked the clerk at the Cosmopolitan if the i 
drummer was here, or soon expected, whose special line 1 
was for the sale of supply and demand ; lavishing a chilling 
and commiserating smile upon us, he benevolently re- 
plied : Why, I constantly hear of him, and see what I < 
believe to be his former artificially colored empty cover, , 
and all the bellboys so often hear such jeering jibes about ' 
him that they are convinced that he is no other than that { 
detonation given, when Bacchus gets his gun off, or the 
pithy obstruction is removed from a bottle of extra Sec. 
Well, indeed you may well suppose that that did not 
quite satisfy our Yankee curiosity, so we hunted up our 
old school primer, and this is but a small fraction of what 
we learned. 

322 



7C FACTS 

In the supply and demand of all life-giving and preserv- 
ing commodities in nature, are ever fixed and constant, 
at the service of the will of man, all other forces of nature 
and ever fruitful only in connection w^ith his past or active, 
but ever actual, labor pov^^er. Such commodities, in obedi- 
ence to the spirit of thrifty independence and the natural 
cravings of the flesh, ever follow the relative rule of direc- 
tion or law of increase in the supply. And, in harmonious 
unity to the imperative demands of nature, the demand 
follows the converse rule of action or direction or the 
law of relative increase, in accordance with the pro rata 
or comparative increase of the earth's population. There- 
fore, the supply and demand are fixedly and constantly 
increasing, or never retroceding, of such natural fruits 
as well as all artificial structural fabrics and felicitous 
transformations. In this respect the ever-present rule or 
law of supply and demand, of all life-giving and preserv- 
ing, intrinsic values, of a material and palpable nature, 
of themselves but potential or in part inactive, may be 
said to be invariable or unyielding, or, as some love to call 
it, immutable and inexorable. 

The supply and demand of nature's gifts of human 
necessity ever remaining thus constant in general, can 
never be appreciably disturbed by the action or manipula- 
tion of a fractional-globe-government, much less by the 
action of a few individuals ; while either by law may 
locally change the capacity of their figurative measure, 
money, to a considerable extent, but never the volume or 
amount of supply or demand until the laborer ceases to 
toil. So this supply and demands remains radically inde- 
pendent of the supply and demand of its legal, imaginary 
measure, money, which latter was but devised to lighten 
the burden of the former's distribution, particularly to 
those overcrowded, unsound, labyrinthal, honeycombed 
rows of rock and mortar, those great, indefinable, mag- 
netic attractions for the ever-increasing agglomeration of 
the idle, the vicious and the dissolute, there to be herded 
by that scrubby human growth, the alderman; and to be 
known to the coming man as the cities of the past. 

Therefore, the supply of intrinsic value commodities de- 
pends only on the ability and willingness of man to judi- 

323 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

cially expend labor power, which alone, in connection 
with the potential forces of nature, can truthfully, justly 
and honestly create or produce an interest, yield or in- 
crease. Then, away with your individual tax for the use 
of that impotential legal evidence or witness of labor, long 
past performed ! Allow or give only to the rightful owner 
of the substance its due increase. But never to the 
shadow ! 

So also the demand for such intrinsic value or life-con- 
serving commodities, depends only on the ability of man 
to procure, by his labor or by legal-labor-evidence, or by 
the fruits of human and natural productive force, the per- 
emptory needs of nature in sustaining human existence. 
On man being provided with, or possessed of, this ability 
to purchase or procure the necessaries of life, then, and 
then only, is the law or method of action, of demand, in- 
variable or unyielding. Which vacillation and cause of 
human suffering can be unfortunately aggravated by arti- 
ficial or legal means, through the ignorance, omission or 
mercenary and perfidious connivance of government or 
those delegated to regulate national social affairs. 

As long as the race exists this demand or corporal 
requirement, as well as fanciful requisition, will exist ; 
and as long as men shall make use of a nationally or uni- 
versally accepted token or figurative, measuring evidence 
of real value, just so long will the demand for them 
exist, proportionately increasing with the increase of 
population, intelligence and volume of business, barter 
or exchange of commodities, in order to thereby avoid 
as much as possible the effort used, or labor employed, in 
the distribution of movable or portable values or com- 
modities, or the easy legal exchange of the visible or tan- 
gible forces of nature, in combination with the beneficial 
aggregation or crystallization of actual labor power, such 
as a house, a farm, etc. 

Nations only should supply this demand, starting with 
an equal amount, one-half, one-third or one-sixth, that of 
the nation's actual potential wealth, as a legal, nominal, 
measuring token or piece-evidence volume, or circulating 
medium of exchange. Or the equal, or one-half, of the 
real value of the annual production, should be thus repre- 

324 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

\ 

sented, and a just and commensurate increase added regu- 

|| larly to agree with the increase of real wealth, in order 

f to keep current measures or ruling prices from going 

I below a minimum standard, and to maintain and increase 

I the standing of the nation before the world — if such a 

thing is in any way advisable at all, and, whether or not, 

when a majority of the people wish it so — for the same 

effort is only required to pay $io of bank money as lo 

cents for ten pounds of cotton. 

When this supply of money remains stationary or de- 
creases, while the volume of barter or business increases, 
then barter or production suffers, except done on unofficial 
or individual credit, and then the rule, order, law or prin- 
ciple of the demand bears nothing in common with, and 
has no unity of action with, the order of supply, which is 
not only artificial, but, as well, designedly perverted from 
working in any harmony with the demand by the mach- 
inations of a cunning class, who will not work, but who 
will live on others' toil. So, as far as the law or rule or 
order of supply and demand is concerned, as regards the 
supply of money, there is no relation in common or 
unison between it and the demand, because the supply is 
kept in an inadequate volume for the benefit of a certain 
class, to whose interest it is to keep it from satisfying 
the demand, in order to increase its purchasing power 
and interest yielding capacity. And as long as it is kept 
from supplying or satisfying this demand, then the law 
of supply and demand of the real, actual values or neces- 
sities for human existence does not apply to, nor has 
nothing in harmonious unity with, the supply of money. 
The law of the supply and demand of natural products 
and human consumption is interdependent on either and 
both and beyond human control, or is beyond the artful 
or cunning device of designing men, but who, knowing 
this, speculate on its certainty or constancy for their own dis- 
honest aggrandizement, but can never alter this law, as 
it is coexistent, coessential, coefficient and coeternal. 
The demand for a felicitous exchanging medium of barter 
may be said to resemble in part the coextensiveness of 
the demand of nature ; but the supply or rule or order 
or law of the supply of money is but a farcical parody or 

, 325 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

pitiable burlesque on the supply of labor power and nat- 
ural forces, and by its manipulators is never allowed to 
act in co-operant harmony with the demand for money 
or the supply of necessary, natural products. So when 
the sycophant asserts that it is the immutable and inexor- 
able law^ of supply and demand of nature that governs 
prices, he simply lies, or tries to cover his ignorance by 
the shadow of the bugbear of the artificially manufac- 
tured supply and demand of usurious conjurers, for he 
does, or should, know that prices are regulated by the ex- 
orbitant and mutable will of the usurer, b}^ regulating and 
keeping a vacillant and ever-insufficient supply for human 
requisition or demand, for he knows that up to now that 
the great majority have been willing to give a bushel, in 
the name of a peck, to preserve their honor and prove 
their silly honesty, but the printing press is hard at work, 
and it is now nearly time for the tide to go out and carr}^ 
along that baneful social surf, the usurer. 

So the following may be laid down as axioms as to the 
certainty and uncertainties of the natural law of suppl)^ 
and demand, and as to its regulation of prices: First, 
eternal, natural forces always constant and ever present, 
the supply of necessary, natural products depends only on 
the ability and willingness of man to expend labor power 
in connection with the real, actual fruits of past labor 
power, and this alone is the only true governor of supply. 
Second, the demand is but the peremptory demand of 
nature, ever fixed and constant and coeternal with the 
race, and can but be slightly ruffled, ending in human 
hunger or suflfering, by the machinations of an insignifi- 
cant minority, otherwise fundamentally supernal or be- 
yond human control. 

In order to satisfy this demand, either in the hom.e, 
the markets, etc., the individual must be supplied with 
the necessary products of nature or supplied or provided 
with the ability to purchase or to pay for them with legal 
evidences or universally recognized tokens of their meas- 
uring representation or figurativeness. If pjovided with 
this ability, mone}^ the demand is satisfied and constant, 
as well as the consumption, and thereby prices are main- 
tained, if not increased. If not provided with this ability 

326 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

to purchase, the demand and consumption is thereby de- 
li creased, and the prices of natural products decrease or 
j decline, and the measuring capacity of money must in- 
ij crease from the insufficient amount for the supply of all. 
j Fourth, the supply of money at present is wholly and 
! solely at the will of the usurer, and in no way governed 
j by the immutable and inexorable law of the supply and 
j demand of nature, except by the speculation of the 
'i usurer, in its absolute constancy of life necessity. And in 
|i this way he alone is enabled to rule prices and not the 
j natural law of products and requirements or supply and 
i demand. 

j All animals are associative, and assemble, wander, 
roam, rove or ambulate and combine in bevies, clans, 
bands, families, flocks, droves or herds, or tribes, and of 
all known species or families the individual rights of the 
one are inviolably recognized and left sacredly undis- 
turbed by the other, and so it should be with that animal 
man, to whom only, as far as human knowledge goes, 
was given such attributes as thought and those peculiar 
guttural, nasal and labial powers of producing sound, by 
the diversifying of which he is able to express or com- 
municate the individual thought to others, commonly 
called language ; having this, man formed communities, 
nations and hired of himself delegates to assemble and 
frame laws, impartial alike to all in their workings, and in 
strict harmony with the views entertained, as expressed 
by the greater number. And now this intelligent tribe 
of a 70,000,000 family has a government known as the 
Republic of the United States. 

To the assemblage of delegates the}^ gave the name of 
Congress. To this Congress they gave the power to coin 
and issue money, alike to all, for services rendered or 
public improvements, or they might loan it on good se- 
curity, as is now loaned to the national banks or wealthy 
classes, who have never rendered any real, actual benefit 
to society for their representative of real products. It is 
denied to individuals, to corporations and even to the 
states to issue legal tender, this right being reserved to 
Congress alone. It is, then, the duty of Congress to issue 
this legal evidence of value or tokens of real wealth, 

327 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

backed by good and sufficient security, so that if the first 
owner of the transferable note should die, that his prop- 
erty was good for the amount, the title to which the 
government had examined and vouched for. It is the 
duty of the government to issue or to loan this medium, 
devised only to render easy the barter, swapping or ex- 
changing of cumbrous commodities or fixed, immovable j 
wealth at a nominal cost, such as to the national banks | 
at I per cent., to every individual offering the proper ; 
security of realty, and 'not on the legal shadow of that i 
realty. ' 

Would 3'Ou not consider a man insane who would come I 
up to a bank window and ask for the loan of $ioo on \ 
the $ioo he now presented, and that he would pay for it ' 
lo per cent, per annum? Now, virtually we are doing 
this to-day by the workings of our present national bank- 
ing system. Here is a mortgage or a United States \ 
bond, which is transferable and bearing interest ; they are 
both the transcript or legal evidence of a debt. The na- ' 
tional bank note is the transscript or legal evidence of a 
second debt, based upon a first debt, the law, according 
to one story, or the man that printed it, did not write on it 
that it bore interest ; but the deputy or second-hand issuer or 
loaner says, ''You bet it does" ! — lo per cent, if he trades 
or loans it for the other evidence of debt that honestly 
says it pays interest. There is no essential difference 
between the bond, bank bill and mortgage, except that 
one is a partial legal tender, the others optional legal 
tender, and that two of them are plain and honest in their 
declarations or purport, the bank bill intentionally de- 
ceitful and dishonest, besides a visionary, legal techni- 
cality for lawyers to chew on and keep their jaws from 
rusting. If the government lends legal tender tokens to 
one individual as a medium of exchange at i per cent., it 
should loan it to all in sums to suit their convenience or 
security. 

If government persists in refusing to do this, society 
must repudiate all past debts and resort to individual 
notes and non-interest bearing for their circulating me- 
dium, and let the usurers borrow and loan between them- 
selves, for honest labor is getting tired of supporting 

328 



J 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

crafty wit. Government should prohibit, as intended, 
the giving or taking of interest for the use of money 
between individuals, and individuals and corporations, 
as money in itself and of itself is powerless of increase, 
and the law can only rightfully give it what it has given 
it — the legal or artificial power of rendering barter easy 
or exchange. As money is not real wealth or the crystal- 
lization of fruitful labor power, such as man, farm, 
cereals, house, etc., if any interest or tax should be paid 
for it, it should only be that tax required for the support 
of government alone, and compel all to live by honest, 
fruitful industry, or otherwise compel them to suffer the 
pangs of hunger they now inflict, by the aid of inequita- 
ble, deceitful laws, on those who now do honestly labor. 
But you say that in the silver or gold dollar that labor 
power is represented to the amount of $i. Yes, indeed! 
But you put it mildly, and, since you are a worshipper 
of mysticism and catch phrases, you give it that ambigu- 
ous, half expression intended to deceive. Not only have 
we one, but we have more than two dollars' worth of 
labor represented therein, but how? We have it as the 
shameful, barbarous, lasting witness of the aggregation 
or crystallization of labor power lost, or effort wasted, 
that otherwise might have been productive of fruitful 
benefit; yes, the genuine, existing evidence of our folly, 
ever jeering, mocking and ridiculing man, on the one hand, 
for his idiocy, and on the other for his duplicity. It may 
be true that the bank cashier could not live one week 
without an ounce of gold for a collar button, for, like all 
fanciful birds, he would die of grief for the want of his 
toy-thing or mate ; but, aside from this, where are the 
true or real benefits in the ounce of gold more than 
the ounce of iron, silver, platinum or any other like sub- 
stance? It is used as a money token of law, and for 
that use best adapted. If you are compelled to buy in 
European countries you can have it exchanged, if you 
have no real values to exchange, as those governments 
use it also as tokens of law, and there all its value, both 
intrinsic and imaginary, ends. Interest, for the true or 
real crystallization of fruitful or productive labor power 
is just in accordance with the amount of real benefit 

329 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

derived by man from it. Interest for the use of money 
is unjust and wrong. 

When an individual builds himself a home, with actual 
labor power or with the universally acknowledged legal 
receipt for labor, or the fruits of labor rendered, he or 
she is in all justice entitled to all the benefits, or their 
equivalent, from that accruing therefrom, as it is the real 
crystallization of human labor power with the potential 
forces of nature combined, less the indispensable expense 
for the support of government for the protection of soci- 
ety and its property. When from any cause of a legiti- 
mate character the owner of such wishes to dispose 
of his real wealth or value and wishes to move from 
there to any other part or climate, they can sell it for 
money, or exchange it for real wealth. It is now and 
now only that the owner can avail him or herself of 
the only virtue or powers of money — the power of ex- 
change — when both parties are agreed as to the amount, 
then only can money be a legal tender or obligatory on 
the seller or creditor to receive it, for now the seller of 
the property is empowered by the law creating money 
virtually to transfer his house or his farm of snow from 
North Dakota to or for a farm of sunshine in Florida. 
This is all the virtue there is, or ever can be, in money, 
either honestly, truly or constitutionally, and, while the 
possessor does not himself re-exchange that for labor 
power or for the crystallization of labor power, or for its 
potentially increasing fruits, he is not entitled to any in- 
terest or increment for his legal factor of exchange, as 
he is deriving all the benefits that it can ever possess — 
that of exchange. 

The factors composing the government temporarily, 
who are supposed to possess average intelligence at least 
and be impartial, should always endeavor to lay a lawful 
or just premium on American homeseekers and home 
owners, and condemn an increase for any cunning fictive 
agent, such as distorted money, or for anything which 
does not visibly, actually or palpably increase itself or 
render tangible benefits to man in supplying his absolute 
necessities ; by doing so you will not only act in harmony 
with nature's laws, as she only yields to active labor 

330 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

power her increase, but never to the cunningly devised 
abortion of unstable, vacillant, airy, human law; but you 
will lawfully and righteously condemn the unhealthy, 
abominable, accursed speculation on the deplorable con- 
dition and calamitous misfortunes of the honestly inclined 
laborer by that loathsome, hideous drone, the usurer, and 
if no other good resulted from such law or action the 
dronish usurer would learn that in order to live he must 
comply with the just laws of nature, and to labor and to 
appreciate henceforth at his true moral worth the truly 
magnanimous, docile laborer, who was heretofore com- 
pelled to support him and all his ilk, and also to practi- 
cally illustrate his gratitude to the previously despised 
laborer by stepping down from his airy bank pillar and 
personally invest the stereotyped picture of his now fitful 
fancy, money, and by his exchange of labor power and 
consequent creation of actual or potential benefit, then 
no one will grudge him his benefit or increase. A¥e only 
want to have and maintain a nation of active, laboring, 
thrifty, industrious homeseekers and homemakers, who 
associate for the common good of our common country 
and for the perpetuation of its free or freer institutions, in 
the hope of elevating all mankind, and not a nation of 
leprous, blighting usurers, who mock all the laws of God 
and nature. 

The payment of interest causes the farmer to dispense 
with the comforts he deserves to enjoy through honest 
industry, and even pinch from himself and family some 
of the necessities for a healthful life, in order to pay inter- 
est, that the drone may dwell in luxury, thus virtually 
closing the factory doors, and now depriving his brother la- 
borers of the power to purchase from his sufficient whole- 
some food to support that glowing spirit of freedom and 
transmit by a healthy regeneration a race of God-imaged and 
gifted freemen. All — all this that the laws of nature be 
depsised and contemned to constitute a distinct class of 
human beings, whose special attribute shall be known to 
industrious, mortal man as total exemption from toil and 
death. Oh! what an attempted burlesque on the divine 
law of nature and her equity! Then, away with inter- 
est or increment on or for money! That interest that 

331 ' 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS ' 

is society's fungoidal, poisonous blight on society, destroying y 
and prostituting the true virtues or functions of money and '" 
rendering it, money's cruel, cancerous curse on money! {, 

STATE LAW. ' 

I 

Interest seems to have such cetaceously cauterizing or | 
brutally fly-blistering effects on its victims in general | 
that it ever has been the hideous bugbear and terrifying '' 
nightmare of all thoughtful legislators, statesmen and 
writers ever since Moses was a minor, even down to the 
admission of the last State admitted into our Union — 
Wyoming, July 13, 1890. 

In the forty-eight states and territories, but five agree 
on the legal rate and the rate allowed by contract. Of 
the seven last admitted, beginning with 1876, but two of 
them — the Dakotas — agree as to the rates of interest, but 
those even disagree on the years allowed on judgments. 
Some states place a penalty of forfeiture for what they 
are pleased to term usury, which is interest only, as all 
interest is dishonest, unjust, and consequently illegal, as 
against all the laws of nature and equity, and eleven of 
them, in order to get clear of the meshes of that swamp- 
ing angel, interest or usury, virtually legalize it by break- 
ing its slender chain and turning it loose, to use their own 
expression, "at any rate." 

So conflicting were their dreams of the righteousness 
of interest and their waking, honest, truthful, just and 
convincing judgment of its iniquitous oppression, wrong 
and injustice that, in the sequent confounding confusion, 
they lost all powers of discernment and knowledge of 
the true, figurative, legal functions of money, and the 
real intrinsic value attributes of all real, potential, pro- 
ductive forces and matter, and in their legal raving treat- 
ed money as real wealth, and to he who shuns all risk and 
social obligations by loaning it, ever their shameful and 
lasting confusion and disgrace, it must be recorded they 
allowed him interest for its safe keeping and certain or 
vouched-for return, and on that which he was thereby 
exempted from the payment of any taxes, which real 

332 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

wealth had to bear, in order that money might retain its 
legal-exchanging sole value. 

Now the entangling question arises, Are those state 
laws treating money as wealth or realty, lawful, just or 
equitable, truly impartial and constitutional? Consider- 
ing money in its truly scientific and justly social sense, as 
the impartially fiducial fiat of society, expressed by law, 
creating its legal factor of exchange, leaving out the 
virtue or powers of yield or interest, which is extrinsic 
from, and cannot be in harmony with, the laws of nature, 
and wholly beyond the fallible, assumed powers of man. 
From this standpoint interest for the use of money, as the 
legal exchanging receipt for actual labor power, is radi- 
cally wrong and unjust and the base perversion and 
abominable assumption of human law is pitiably apparent 
to all. 

But if, by some supernatural, mysterious power, man 
could frame a law granting to money special, beneficial, 
intrinsic attributes, which it does not now possess, such 
as procreant powers, for even to create, produce or 
increase its tokens or fractional evidences actual labor 
power has to be called into requisition now, which plainly 
proves that nothing will or can increase or is lawfully 
entitled to increase except actual labor power with nature 
or potentially fruitful matter, as man can produce from 
gold a drinking cup, etc., or a token of legal exchange or 
tender, each of which should be duly recognized for their 
beneficial utilization as conveyancers, the one conveying 
the chyling or chyming milk or caustic gorganizing gall, 
the other conveying the abbreviated decree of the greater 
number's law. And that such a new law also possesses 
the supernal powers of banishing from the human mind 
all doubt concerning its justice and indelibly impressed 
on the minds of all men the belief or faith that money 
w^as of itself a potential element of increase. Even then 
the question of the constitutionality of money being enti- 
tled to a settled, or any, interest or increase, is open, 
wholly unsettled and extremely pendulous, and by the 
rich man held as execrably abhorrent. 

For controversial purposes let us say that money is pro- 
ductive of increase, and therefore entitled to draw or 

333 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

supinely suck from the sacred teats of Mother Nature, inter- 
est. Now, then, we find all of the forty-eight states and 
territories, also the District of Columbia, fixing a legal 
rate of interest for whatever moneys or contracts that 
are undecided or undetermined, or on which the state 
may be called on in any way for a post jurisdiction, two 
of them allowing 5 per cent, as the lawful or legal rate, 
twenty-six of them 6 per cent., twelve of them 7 per 
cent., five of them 8 per cent, two of them 10 per cent, 
and only one of them 12 per cent., or average bank earn- 
ings, or an average of 6.7 per cent, for all. Now, how. 
is it that all that diversification, fixed rate, etc., are all 
legal, righteous, just, etc., while the following opposite 
divergencies are strictly just and lawful between the loan- 
ing individual and society and between society and the 
loaning individual : Thirty-seven of the states and terri- 
tories legalize the interest on contracts ; twenty-six of 
them allow, as legal and just from one and one-eighth as 
much to twice as much on legal contracts as they do on 
legal contracts. Those twenty-six states allow, as by 
their just financial laws, based on and framed after heav- 
enly or divine law, an average of 6.^ per cent, on law-decid- 
ed, honest debts, and allow an average of 9.4 per cent, on 
law-decided, honest debts, the former being the legal rate 
on post-contracts determined by the state, the latter 
being the legal rate on contracts made by the usurer, 
the state establishing him as such by allowing him a 
rate that it does not judge just or honest in cases wherie 
it is called in to decide. Now, eleven of the states allow 
an equal share or rate on contracts made or undetermined. 
The other eleven states seem to have become so mulishly 
muddled by this hazy mess of mazy financial glume 
that, in their brain-mellowing madness, they hysterically 
cried from the fence corners, the roadside and chimney 
tops, in soul-stirring, heart-rending, agonizing tones, in- 
terest on contracts legalized at any rate. Oh, consistent 
justice! Art thou not a sweet cented jewel? 

The producer denies the right of increment for the use 
of money. The capitalist worships this right as a divine 
inspiration, revealed through human law, and contends 
that all must recognize the right of the state to deter- 

334 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

mine the rate of increase and permanently establish the 
same by law. Then, if money is wealth or not, has not 
the state the inalienable right to fix the increase or yield 
to be derived as his share by the exploiter of any wealth, 
or money, or money with actual labor, invested in any in- 
dustry, particularly when the exploitation, or industry, 
or corporation is carried on or operated by the special 
recognition .or charter of the State? If the profit for 
money be determined and fixed by law in one case, most 
assuredly it has that right in all cases. If any more than 
a profit of 9.4 per cent, be prohibited in one case, it should, 
and must, be in all. Then why not enact laws prohibiting 
any more profit to be derived by the owners of the factory 
than 9.4 per cent, per annum on the money actually in- 
vested in the factor, the remaining increment to be divid- 
ed between the creators of all wealth, the laborers, in 
the factory? 

On money invested in active industry only should 
interest be allowed as an incentive to honest productive 
activity, and more so still while the crystallization of 
labor power, such as the factory, etc.,. is taxed for the 
support of all recognized government. But, instead of 
such a just and wholesome law of social science being 
applied and enforced, the capitalist is aided and abetted 
in piling up his profit by cutting down the miserable pit- 
tance allowed by him to those without whom increase is 
impossible, the laborer, in order that capital may receive 
a hundredfold interest, which is blasphemously called 
lawful, just and honest profit or yield, but which is das- 
tardly snatched and torn by the demon paws of human 
law from its rightful owner, creator and only possible 
producer, the laborer. 

And this unregulated curse of interest or profit for capi- 
tal versus labor is what causes some honestly inclined 
advocates of labor to seek the primal cause for that 
threatening, widening gap between millionaires and men- 
dicants in the workings of a protective tariff. But while, 
through the operations of an import duty, it may accel- 
erate your quota of millionaires by maintaining a higher 
current price of all commodities, particularly those fin- 
ished for consumption by human skill and labor, but its 

335 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

abolishment would not relatively decrease the abnormal 
ranks of either without regulating by law the profits to be 
retained on otherwise all risked, invested capital, when 
those profits arose or amounted to a certain sum, say, lo 
per cent., to be retained by the investor and the remain- 
der to be divided among those who primarily made possi- 
ble the prosperous yield, the investor to receive no yield, 
as is now the case, until the yield overbalanced the cost ; 
but this accursed interest for the use of money without 
risk must have a profit, whether the borrower's yield 
balances the cost or not on the illegitimate, scurfy, scur- 
rilous plea of, "Well, it was not the lender's fault" ! and 
also by abolishing by law^ any increment or interest 
whatever on unrisked, non-personally or actively in- 
vested capital or money. All those who allowed their 
labor or productions of labor to accumulate and lay dor- 
mant or latent in labor's universally recognized and legal 
exchangeable receipt and tender, to be taxed on that 
money in order to support that government which, by 
its existence and continuous mandate, maintained the 
legal tender qualities in that money, instead of compelling 
industrious society to pay them an exorbitant tax on ac- 
count of their killing beauty and seductive ways. Amen ! 
The tariff duty must be considered a nationally inter- 
national measure and has little to do with the states, or 
with the donations doled out by the employer to the 
employed. It enables the employer, whether he does so 
or not, to pay higher wages than he could in the absence 
of such a duty. Whether he pays it or not, or does not 
pay one-half what he should, strictly are those questions 
coming within the adjudication of the state in the man- 
agement of its own internal home affairs, and the tariff 
duty is as guileless of guilt as your state laws regulating 
increase and profit are guilty of connivance and omis- 
sion. Regulate your profits on corporate investments, 
and away with that hideous, ghastly, grinning gorgon of 
interest for the use of that idle, dainty, timid, gazing, 
theatrical ghost — money! If it is meet and just, wise, 
advisable and lawful to regulate the profit, yield or in- 
crease to the individual or corporate loaner, by all society 
and between all society and the individual or corporate 

336 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

loaner of money, how many thousand times more so is it 
i to stipulate and regulate by law the increase, yield, profit 
i or interest for the individual or corporate investor by 
I or from all society, of which he is but the merest, infini- 
I tesimal fraction ? How infinitely disgraceful, wrong and 
! iniquitous is that law which forces the one transitory 
I human being to the preposterous ranks of the millionaire 
j in a short score of years, and likewise forces and tramples 
I thousands of identically congeneric beings, through hun- 
i ger or the terrible uncertainty of to-morrow's crackling 
! crust, to a premature grave, and millions to the ranks of, 

to them, undeserved, mvsterious, brain-paralyzing pov- 

' In the hope of finding another intrinsic-value excuse 
! for interest on money, besides money to increase with 
'.. age, and money to bear 2 per cent, increase from birth, 
either, to offset the usurer's grab, we've sta3^ed awake 
o' nights ever since the "last flood of light," torturing 
the brain in vain for some plain, earthly reason or other 
excusable measure to happily apply. At last we sighted a 
mythical island in this great, transparent ocean, to 
which we anchored, to, giveusarest, and named it ]\Iount 
Wheraruat,- and on relaxatingly fishing around through 
the pure fluid we caught another whaling excuse for in- 
terest on money, of such ponderous dimensions that in 
order to translate its parts we were forced to anchor it 
to the island also, and this was the sum total of our haul, 
bones, belly, blubber and all : 

''Let all politicians join and assemble together on a 
Good — black — Friday and, with a unanimous and pro- 
digious heigh, ho ! proclaim : 'From this day on, for ever, 
each separate piece of money shall entitle the holder to 
a first-class cabin passage — no steerage — and on landing 
a warranted, ground floor, first-class reserved seat — no 
gallery— in heaven' " ! Now, should any heartless grum- 
bler be found to grudge interest on money possessing 
such all-absorbing, delightful privileges, then we will 
pledge our (what?) honor to hire Uncle Harry George's 
mule to kick his brains out — not Uncle Harry's brains, 
nor the mule's own brains, but those of the mule's father, 
that macratous miser. This measure would afford to the 

337 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

1 

angelic usurer any amount of seats on which to cock up ' 
his feet and spread out his spotless wings, while for the 1 
happy, industrious mortal, that majestic one would be 
sufficient, to which he was entitled by the heretofore de- 
spised, silver-buzzard-dollar. And if you can find any 
more logical excuses we are all attention. Lest the 
farmer of paragraph 675 would forget the equitable beau- 
ties that each industry obtains from the sapient sanctity 
of our financial laws and their resultant working sim- 
plicity, we will quote for him the statements of Presi- 
dent G. G. Williams of the Chemical National Bank of 
New York City to the Congressional Committee on Bank- 
ing and Currency, on December 15, 1894, regarding the 
petty, prevalent, privative profits of banking, in contrast 
with the lavish, legitimate, liberal, lionlike levy of lucre 
of lucky, laborious toil. ''Mr. Williams was questioned 
as to the conditions of his own bank. He said its capital 
was $300,000. It had a surplus of $6,000,000 ; the undivid- 
ed profits were more than $1,000,000. The deposits 
reached $30,000,000, probably the largest in the United 
States, if not in the world. The dividends were 15 per 
cent, annually. The bank stock sold for $4,300 per share 
of $100." Now, take out your pencil and calculate your 
own conclusions, for if we dared to make any comment 
on that bank's profits it would not only be considered, but 
be justly condemned as an unwarranted, unpardonable 
insult, even to the most dudish, insipid, silly ignoramus. 



338 



I PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

i 

PART IX. 

SUGGESTIVE AFTER-THOUGHTS. 

The chafing critic. — Duty sufficient for bounty. — Two more de- 
partments of government. — Department production and distribution 
and regulate corporate profit. — Government banking department. — 
Constitutional amendments. — Twelve vice-presidential districts. — 
Elections and law. — Legislation. — Vacancies. — Army reorganization. 
— National volunteers. — Retrenchment for ignorant bunkum only. — 
Irrigation, public buildings, navy, etc. — Profit and interest, not tariff. 
Our palliation, — Hole-y Saint George. — Packenham. — Political pol- 
troon. — Pandering press. — Lincoln. — Plowman, another pint of oats. 
— Evil abroad. — Brilliant sparks. — Angelic reader. — Doggerel No. 2. 

As we proceeded with this faultfinding, prosaic, dis- 
quisitional monologue, we have fancied in our dreams 
that we have long since seen the cavilling, chafing, cha- 
grined critic, who was forced to drag himself along thus 
far from sheer lack of luscious, love literature, ready to 
perturbably and vociferously inquire what other reme- 
dies we proposed for a more equitable distribution of 
the products of labor, and what other changes we would 
wish him to make, in order to render justice to all and 
curb the now untrammelled, passions of the politician 
and his patriarchal, public financial plunderer. We will 
deferentially reply that we would have offered them be- 
fore now were it not for the hopes that we entertained 
that, through the intense, disgusting suspense caused 
his callous, carping brain by the delay, it would become 
so heated through excitement as to render it so highly 
sensitive and eminently susceptible to impressions that, 
by an inadvertent pressure of the button, there might be, 
through '^ome mysterious agency, an incipient copy of an 
idea left thereon, which might tend to enlist his sympathy 
and future action in support of the just and ineffaceable 
cause of equal rights to all and special privileges to none. 
Besides those suggestions or intimations previously laid 
down, and all those you may infer, as well as what we 
may reiterate, we will offer a few more, which, we be- 

339 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

lieve, will be worthy at least of your serious condemna- 
tion, if not further investigation and final adoption. 

We would suggest the levying of an import duty suffi- 
cient only to pay a bonus on competing home production, 
in order to enable the producer to pay American wages 
to American labor, the bonus to decrease as the pro- 
duction increased, until it became sufficient for home 
consumption ; then the premium to be taken off and a 
sufficient duty to be imposed on the foreign commiodity 
in order to provide a sufficient margin for profit to the 
home producer over the extra cost of American labor; 
the duty then collected, if any, to go to the general appro- 
priation fund, and for every dollar sent out of the coun- 
try for luxuries, such as champagne, silks, velvets, Brus- 
sels carpets, jewelry, gew-gaws, etc., etc., one dollar for 
dollar, to be collected and placed in the general expense 
fund of the nation, as well as on all that sent or paid 
out for foreign goods, when as serviceable or of similar 
inherent value can be produced by home production, 
when sufficient in quantity for all home consumption. He 
who would not agree to such a proposition, we suspect 
he must be a native born alien and would be glad to see 
him take his departure for better or worse and the rest 
of the ceremony. 

There should be at least two more departments of gov- 
ernment created — one for general production and distri- 
bution, by land and water, by steam and electricity and 
all other forces, empowered to regulate corporate profits, 
by actual cost of production and distribution, to agree 
with the actual profits of individuals employed in the 
same undertakings, or in any legitimate industry, as the 
states now regulate the profit or interest on contracts, 
judgments, judges, loans, etc., etc. Another department 
of banking by the nation or government, empowered to 
issue and circulate money in sufficient volume to supply 
the legitimate demands of commerce, by or in payment 
for profitable public improvements and by loaning it to 
every citizen applying for a loan and able to furnish suffi- 
cient security, at cost of issuance and such government 
banking; and to allow all citizens to deposit all their 
money therein, should they desire to, and compel all 

340 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

citizens not banking under similar conditions and rate 
of interest to deposit all their circulating medium in such 
government institutions or depositories, except four or 
five times the amount of the per capita circulation not 
needed for instand or immediate industrial transfer, to 
enable the government to more accurately determine the 
required volume demanded for actual circulation, and 
which would also prevent that usurer's dreaded bugbear 
of the miser's hoarding, and would work no hardship on 
others, as all now deposit their surplus money. 

This would make ten departments in all. Then divide 
the nation into twelve vice-presidential districts, with 
as near as possible the one-twelfth of the population' 
in each. Then a majority of the voters in each district 
to elect a vice-president of the United States from the 
district. The twelve vice-presidents so elected, on assem- 
bling at the National Capitol on March the first of every 
fourth year after such election, to proceed to choose by 
a vote of seven or eight, one of their own number, who 
shall act as executive officer of the government and pre- 
side at all daily meetings from 6 a. m. to 8 a. m. and from 
6 p. m. to 8 p. m., of the council of vice-presidents, but 
whose veto shall not be binding and who shall not have 
the nominating or appointing power, except the one- 
twelfth of those arising out of the administration of the 
affairs of each department, or those accredited to the dis- 
trict from which he has been elected, to w^hich one- 
twelfth of the appointments may be allowed of all grades 
in every department, and who may be regularly deposed 
from president to vice-president, for any cause, by a vote 
of seven of the vice-presidents. When so deposed, one 
of their number shall be elected by seven votes to replace 
the deposed, when the deposed shall replace the elected as 
chief or head of the department from which the newly 
elected president had been chosen. 

When the selection for chairman or president is made 
and confirmed by a vote of seven, the vice-president shall 
proceed to draw lots for secretary or chief ofiicer of the 
several departments. Before entering on their duties 
as cabinet officers they may interchange their lots for 
departments by the consent of the allotted choice and a 

341 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

majority vote of themselves. The vice-presidents, or' 
heads of departments, shall have the nomination or ap- 
pointment of the eleven-twelfths of all officers or em- 
ployees under their departmental jurisdiction, which 
appointees shall be selected pro rata for all grades, accord- 
ing to vote last cast from each state or part of state in 
the several vice-presidential districts. All appointees in 
that grade requiring confirmation shall be confirmed by 
the Senate, and a vote of six vice-presidents and their 
commission, signed by the president. Should the nomi- 
nee be rejected for cause, the head of department will 
continue nominating until the position is filled from his 
selection, the cause for non-confirmation to be : Disquali- 
fication on account of the lack of education deemed neces- 
sary to creditably fulfil the duties pertaining to the office, 
but the chief test for qualification to be a strict com- 
pliance and guarantee with and for the provisions laid 
down in paragraphs 508-11, regarding true or bonafide 
American citizenship. 

Any measure passed by the House and Senate to come 
to the vice-presidential council for approval ; when ap- 
proved, the president to sign it and order its record as 
probationary law ; if disapproved of by a vote of seven 
of the vice-presidential council it is returned, with sug- 
gested amendments, to the house or body from where it 
originated. The salary of the vice-presidents to be $20,- 
000 per annum; the president's to be $21,000; the term 
to be four years. Presidents and vice-presidents to be 
ineligible for re-election. Any civil officer holding any 
civil office above $1,000 per annum to be ineligible for re- 
appointment to any office yielding over $500 per annum, 
the judiciary not excepted, as while it may take two cen- 
turies to learn law, full justice may be learned in less than 
two days. 

The president or any vice-president may be impeached 
for breach of any constitutional act or law, or for drunk- 
enness, sedition or treason ; a conviction for either must 
be sustained by a vote of six of the vice-presidents. A 
motion by one vice-president without a second to be suffi- 
cient to institute impeachment proceedings. If either 
be found guilty of the charge they shall be immediatelv 

342 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

deposed and removed from office, such deposition to 
entail the loss of all the rights of citizenship. 

Should a vacancy occur in the presidencv or any of 
the vice-presidencies, a call to be issued by' the acting- 
president of the United States, as soon as possible there- 
after, for all the state senators and state representatives 
of the state legislatures who represent in part any and all 
of the states within the vice-presidential district, to 
assemble at some designated central point or place and 
proceed to elect a vice-president of the United States for 
the district. The governor of the state wherein the desig- 
nated place is situate shall preside over the elective 
assemblage, without having a vote. Having been duly 
called to order and having proceeded in the regular order 
of business, of credentials, etc., they shall then proceed 
by an aye and nay viva voce vote, to vote for all of the 
nominees, nominations not to close until a candidate or 
successor is elected by a majority of those present, duly 
accredited electors, no proxy, and voting. All electors 
present must cast a vote for or against each candidate or 
nominee. When any candidate receives a majority of 
the votes of those present and voting, he shall be de- 
clared elected and nominations declared closed. When 
the governor presiding signs his credentials, which must 
also be signed by all those voting for him, and may be 
signed by those other electors, if they shall so elect, when 
the election shall be declared completed and the district 
elective congress dissolved. 

The elected successor to proceed to the Capital of the 
United States and present his credentials to the council 
of vice-presidents, whose acceptance by a vote of six, as 
to the authenticity and genuineness of credentials, etc., 
shall be sufficient to decide, whereupon he shall be duly 
sworn and installed as vice-president of the United States. 
Then an election for president or the confirmation of 
the president pro tem., to be proceeded with in due pre- 
scribed form. Should a vacancy occur in the presidency 
the council shall immediately assemble and proceed to 
choose, appoint or elect a president pro tem., to be presi- 
dent of the United States until he is further confirmed 
and his successor duly elected and inaugurated. The 

343 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

senatorial term to be four years; United States senators 
to be elected by direct vote of the people, one-half to be 
elected biennially. Only one senator to be allowed to 
1,000,000 inhabitants in each state or fraction of a million. 
The Senate to have the power or authority to institute 
proceedings of impeachment of the president or vice- 
president, as is the case now made and provided for im- 
peachment. Also, the impeachment and removal of any 
member or members of its own body ; also the same, with 
any members of the House of Representatives ; and if any 
such are deposed a vacancy shall be declared and an 
election ordered, as in cases of other vacancies now made 
and provided. The House of Representatives to have 
power to impeach and remove, by a two-thirds vote of all 
the members elected, the president, vice-presidents, sena- 
tors and any member or members of their own body, 
similarly with the United States Senate, for unconstitu- 
tional or unlawful conduct or action. 

A petition presented or sent to the council of vice- 
presidents and duly signed by two-thirds of the members 
of any state legislature, to be sufficient to order and 
authorize that body to remove, for cause, any member 
or members of the Senate or House from such a state. 
The petition must be accompanied with reasonable proof 
that the accused were absent on other business any time 
during the legislative session, other than on family sick- 
ness or death, or for having entered the legislative cham- 
ber in a state of intoxication from drugs or liquor. 

Any measure or law passed by Congress and signed by 
the president and of record, as well as all those not con- 
firmed by the council, but again returned by Congress, 
in either case, to yet remain inoperative as respited statu- 
tory paradigms of law, on that particular affair or social 
measure, in order the better to give the masses full oppor- 
tunity to intelligently and calmly discuss their merits and 
features, until the people shall have voted for its adoption 
or rejection, a majority of such votes for it or against 
to be final and decide whether it shall become law or 
not. If the majority favors the law, it shall take effect as 
soon as the official vote is counted and certified; if the 
opposite be the case, the law shall be void. If by the vote 

344 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

of six of the vice-presidents it shall be deemed for the 
best interest of the whole people to submit a law for their 
ratification, as soon as practicable after its passage by 
both houses, a special ratification day may be announced 
for its adoption or rejection, otherwise ratification day to 
be held on the first Wednesday after the first Monday in 
November of each year, to pass or vote on all other laws 
within the interim. 

Each state to have the constitutional right of intro- 
ducing, through their representatives, one bill at least 
each year, which must be accompanied by a petition ask- 
ing for its consideration and signed by legal electors of 
the state only. The proposed bill, if signed by 100,000 
electors or more, to be considered as of primary import- 
ance, and in its own special due order to have precedence 
over all other measures or bills. If accompanied by less 
than 100,000 signatures, it to be considered as of second- 
ary importance, but to have precedence over any meas- 
ure or bill introduced by any individual member of either 
house. 

For the introduction of state bills, for the first one each 
year, to insure its consideration in due order, to be filed 
by the first of February of each year. If not filed by 
that date to take its place in regular order on the calen- 
dar to be known as bills by the state. All state bills to 
be voted on finally within one month of first reading in 
either house. If a bill should fail of passage, its failure 
not to debar any state from introducing a similar bill in 
that year, or any subsequent year. 

Another suggestion that might prove of social benefit, 
without extra expense, would be something like the fol- 
lowing outline': To reduce the standing army to seven 
regiments of infantry, three regiments of cavalry, and two 
regiments of artillery, with twelve companies to each regi- 
ment and 100 enlisted men to each company; also one 
captain, one first and two second lieutenants, six ser- 
geants and eight corporals to each company. Two 
majors, one lieutenant-colonel and colonel to each regi- 
ment. 

As a substitute for the reduction enroll one regiment 
from each state for each million or part of a million of 

345 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

inhabitants in each state in the Union as volunteer troops, 
as national state troops, with the same number of men, 
companies, non-com. and commissioned officers to each 
regiment as those of the permanent troops, to be offi- 
cered in part by those officers of the line temporarily 
retired on half pay from the regular army, who should 
receive 25 per cent., except in time of war, over full pay 
when in active service training and drilling the volun- 
teers'. Vacancies for officers to be filled from selection 
and election by the companies, whose choice, then to be 
recommended by the governors of the respective states 
to the secretary of war, who issues a commission, signed 
by the president, and from the regular army by the secre- 
tary of war, but no more than five officers of the regular 
army to be assigned any regiment of volunteers at one 
time. The president not having power to grant commis- 
sions to civilians, except those previously dismissed or 
cashiered from the service, and to be returned to the 
regiment from which they were cashiered. 

One-fourth of the troops to be mounted as cavalry in 
the far North, West and Southwest; two companies of 
each and every regiment, infantry and cavalry, to be 
drilled, equipped and mounted as artillery, each man to 
furnish his own horse, for which he receives fifty cents 
per day and rations while in the annual rendezvous, but 
to be drilled as infantry also. The volunteers to be mob- 
ilized or called up for five weeks each year, during Decem- 
ber, November, January and February, about twenty-five 
regiments to be up every month of the four. Five na- 
tional camps to be established — two South, two West 
and one North. Term of enlistment to be three years, 
with privilege of resigning by giving ninety days' notice 
to the regimental adjutant and governor of the state. 
The pay of privates to be $1.50 per day, rations and uni- 
form while in active service, with privilege of taking: 
home or leaving in any armory all small arms and equip- 
ments ; one suit of fatigue uniform to be furnished every 
year, and a peremptory pass over all lines of railroads or 
other transportation for the volunteer, both going to and 
returning from the rendezvous. The governors of states 
shall have the power and authority to call out the volun- 

346 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

teers of his own state to quell disturbance and preserve 
the peace, but the state shall bear such expense. Army 
officer on half pay to be subject and governed by army 
regulations and articles of war, the same as when on leave 
of absence. One-half a million dollars to be annually given 
as prizes to enlisted men for marksmanship, and the 
same amount in prizes for exemplary conduct and gen- 
eral proficiency. The age for volunteers from twenty 
to sixty. No re-enlistments. 

This reorganization would cost no more than our pres- 
ent army does now, and it would reduce the refuge for 
semi-loafers and quasi-egoistic aristocrats, or, rather, 
Union paupers from cradle to grave. That rigor, rigma- 
role and ritual rendering human beings through com- 
parative isolation and efifete, obsolescent formulas, in- 
human. Away with it, and establish in its stead, or create 
new friendships and associations between the flowers and 
the force and the freemen of the North, South East and 
West, and volatilize those visionary dividing lines by 
allowing the industrial classes of the frozen fields of 
Dakota to exchange ideas and greetings by eye, tongue 
and hand with those of the egg-roasting sands of Florida 
and those of the SAvamps of Louisiana with those of the 
mountain peaks of Idaho. Give them a chance once in a 
lifetime to behold and in reality touch the grandeurs and 
glories of our indivisible and indestructible Republic. 

There is another way in which the nation could be 
benefited or its interests advanced, with benefits to all 
and .injuries to none — by abandoning for the time being 
the democratic, idiotic policy of retrenchment for bunkum 
only, by appropriating $100,000,000 per annum for five 
year and $50,000,000 per annum for five years more, to 
build deep water harbors, seacoast defenses, irrigating 
canals, postoffices, etc., etc., and also building up a navy 
worthy of the nation, our great nation, not the nation of 
the low, cunning, avaricious, selfish, windy, political par- 
tisan, or the fulsome, noisy howl of parties, both Demo- 
cratic and Republican. For it is and must be above the 
conception of our tiresome party man, and ever be, our 
great American nation ! For it is well known to all that 
if we had the initiative and referendum, the pitiable, par- 

347 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

tisan politician would die the death of the Druidish 
monk, whose holy hotch-potch could not now sound more 
hollow. 

This would only amount to $750,000,000, or about $10 per 
capita. In the end we would have the improvements and 
the money, too. The government to issue United States 
Treasury notes in payment to American labor and for 
American material only, the notes to be a full legal ten- 
der for all debts, dues or demands, both public and pri- 
vate, and any citizen or resident property holder within 
the United States who would refuse them in payment of 
any debt whatever, to not only forfeit the right of col- 
lection, but to be arrested by any officer of the law 
or citizen and hurried before any judge of competent 
jurisdiction, who, on finding the accused guilty, through 
competent evidence, to sentence him to at least five years' 
confinement, both unpardonable and non-commutable, in 
any military prison of the United States; the Treasury 
notes to be interchangeable for legal tender gold or silver 
dollars, at the option of the government, whenever there 
were such dollars in the Treasury unappropriated. 

Increase the pay of men-of-wars men, as also their lib- 
erties arid privileges. Make the ship an ideal American 
home when at sea or on active duty. Curtail the author- 
ity and supreme haughtiness of the officers, both in port 
and at sea. An ounce of premonition is worth a ton of 
nitro-glycerine. Reduce the pay of all government offi- 
cials and employees, except the navy, 20 to 30 per cent., 
in order to lessen the ever-increasing, direful dangers of 
that widening chasm of discrepancy in the remuneration 
for their hygeian, sedentary, clerical or exquisite employ- 
ment, and that of those producers, to whom we owe so 
much, besides what mere pittance that they now receive, 
and still decreasing, for their omnifarious, overt, outbal- 
ancing, operose occupations. 

There are a great many well-intentioned, honest, and 
on other subjects to which they have given more attention 
and deeper investigation, and well-informed, thoughtful 
people, who ascribe all the woes of the weary toiler to the 
existence of the protective tariff duty, but its workings 
are only indirect in creating and maintaining those omi- 

348 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

nous, ophidian obstacles to their individual and universal 
well-being, such as trusts, combines or omnifarious mo- 
nopolies, whose frown even, as it were, is sufficient to 
extinguish, lacerate or incinerate the incipient, inept, 
patriotic impulses of that drivelling majority of our legis- 
lators. But as we are of the opinion that they seek the 
snake in the small and wrong swamp, we have attempted 
to give our amusingly benighting views in other parts 
of this book, particularly in that part treating on that 
thieving, thirsting, tithing, thralling, theurgical tax com- 
monly called interest, which, perforce, must occupy the 
sleeping dreams and the waking thoughts of the would- 
be statesman of the future, if he ever hopes to swing a 
lady partner in the next dance. 

In palliation for the pervertible, platitudinous proposi- 
tions plashing through from paragraph 708, which may 
invoke to ire the explosive sensitiveness of the partisan, 
platonic patriot, we will humbly offer the following fee- 
ble, fallible, froward fantasy. The fathers of the country, 
and they were legion, in whose minds originated and 
grew until realized the thoughts of the liberty and equal- 
ity of man, were too much occupied in endeavoring to 
divert, ward off and battle with the, to us now, inappre- 
ciable, physical and mental, financial and political difficul- 
ties that they were compelled to wade through, no won- 
der if the brain was swamped at intervals during the 
conspiring conception, bloody birth, blessed baptism and 
inspiring infancy of our glorious, young Republic to 
coolly, calmly and consistently draft a code that would 
need no addition or change to cripple the cragged, cryptic, 
craftiness of designing, arrant knaves, who are found in 
all communities, and, as we are told, had their prototype 
even in heaven. A code for a country, the prodigious, 
potentially fertile extent, and now immensity of wealth 
and population of which, even in their wildest, hopeful 
day dreams, such never entered their minds to conceive ! 
Of their faults, magnanimity was the principal ! Their 
judgment was blurred by their ancestral love for poster- 
ity, in presuming that their descendants to the end of 
time could approximately appreciate what sacrifices were 
necessary to enable them to hand down that priceless 

349 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

boon to their offspring — that indelible declaration, ma- 
tured manifestation and rapturous realization of free- 
dom! 

They who were compelled to battle, not only with the 
culminating maturation of the feudal, servile and king- 
divine ideas inculcated, instilled and inured in the minds 
of the millions by their regal preachers, teachers and 
tyrant masters for the mind-staggering stretch of cen- 
turies, and those ideas, only more effectually conglutinated 
and composed by the few previously sporadic, sacrificial 
and ineffectual attempts to establish and maintain a gov- 
ernment by and for the whole people. With those minds 
inumbrated with the ever-present, awe-inspiring specta- 
cle of the countless soldiers and armed ships, not only 
ever ready to obey the mandates of tyrants, and execute 
torturing death to the doubter of divine-right doctrines, 
but as well to make a conquering, confiscating raid on 
their weaker neighbors, for the righteous reason of regal- 
ing their forces and prevent their becoming rough or 
rusty. 

They who were also forced to fight, unaided and alone 
(with the singularly peculiar exception of a few daring, 
patrician philanthropic foreigners, like Lafayette and Kos- 
ciusko, whose memories will be revered by all lovers of free- 
dom as long as the mighty water of two gigantic oceans, in 
thousand-mile stretches, lave the shores of our majestic, 
mundane expanse), with a treasury that would not now 
be sufficient to give entree to anyone to any of the hun- 
dreds of the sacrilegiously so-called select circles (but what 
a parody on life purchased equality!) with a pitiable 
army, half-armed, half-clothed and half of many other 
things, but pathetically patriotic ; with a few unarmed 
fishing smacks and schooners, but historically unequalled, 
daring, patriotic sailors, to meet and fight to a finish a 
nation whose insignificantly honorable or brave achieve- 
ments were so excelled and exceeded by her cunning 
duplicity and unbroken chain of treachery that she could 
struttingly and vainly boast that, by the Grace of God and 
the hole-y Saint George, she was mistress of the sea, and 
that the sun never set on her plundering possessions. 

Indeed, such was then that insidious, interloping, tin-y 

350 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

isle of to-day ! Not only did she fight with all the multi- 
form forces then known to modern warfare of the high- 
est ranking nation, our little, but inexpressibly brave, 
army of men, fighting for liberty, country, family and 
home, but she fought them, cherishing a malice, hatred 
and contempt, which she fondly nourishes for us to-day, 
the depth of which can be but inadequately judged from 
the address of General Packenham some thirty-five years 
after she was expelled and her desecrating marks ex- 
punged from whatever they defiled. Packenham's blas- 
phemous badinage to his troops at New Orleans was: 
"Men, your reward for gallant services to-day shall be 
American beauty and booty"! Packenham is gone, but 
still lives on, rankling deep in the hearts of all true Ameri- 
can freemen — the answering clang to that fiendish 
harangue ringing, in loathing parts, oh, that old, libidi- 
nous demon! 

They in whose ranks were hundreds of such unwaver- 
ing, brave and patriotic men as Franklin, Payne, Henry, 
Washington, etc. What an odd combination ! Such poor, 
plain, humble men, with such pure, lofty, noble souls, fill- 
ing the foremost literary, social and financial ranks of 
their ever-edifying time! They needed no restraining 
formulas or fiats in their constitution to stay satanic 
greed and gallop in chasing the ignis fatuus and fan- 
tastic power. Such men, in whom the pure springs of 
patriotism welled up their heads and hearts to overflow- 
ing, and flooding their vision from foreseeing even the 
possibility of the present, perfidious politician. Such men, 
on whose brains the encaustic impression of their Consti- 
tution was written by the liquid-lightning-fire of liberty! 
They needed no reminder of their duty to their fellow 
man, their country and their God ! 

If our unjust un-American economic laws of the past 
thirty years did not render it possible for unconscionable 
capital or ululating, urticating, unciform-nosed usurers 
to dictate to our purchasable, predally perfidious poli- 
ticians what plastic, pendulous," persuasible personages 
to place before the hoodwinked multitudes as their nomi- 
nees for president, who are nominated and announced 
amid a storm of frothy, fulsome, polyphonous praise, 

351 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

whjch is forthwith reverberated to abominable loath- 
someness by the truckling, trafficking, tumorous editor 
until the voter finds himself between the devil and the 
deep, mad sea, and in his bewilderment and desperation 
with the delusive hope of bettering his condition, con- 
cludes to make what appears to him a crushing change, 
only to become soon crushingly convinced that of all the 
evils that threaten the perpetuation of free institutions 
his alternating choice represented the most, and then to 
realize that those whom the lecherous, libelling, mercenary 
press conemptuously denounces as abortive alarmists, 
blasting, blaring bums, calamity howlers, communists, 
cranks, hoboes, idiots, socialists and tramps, were the 
only true prophets and apostles, as also the living witness, 
denouncing the crimes of inhuman monsters and shedding 
light on the immortal truths of genuine American inde- 
pendence. 

We might need no changes in, or amendments to, our 
pure, simple, God-inspired Constitution were it not that 
such divine elements and expressed thought were inap- 
plicable, from lack of exacting and binding, economic 
and other social distinct terms, to stay and prevent the 
destitution and ruin now staring us in the face, through 
the unbridled, headlong, bounding strides of capital — that 
is, the reaved aggregation of unpaid labor — towards cen- 
tralization, with its threatening elimination of equality 
and liberty, and to retard the revolting, reverse regres- 
sion of the millions of titular freemen to the resurgent 
ranks of the robbed and ragged rifTrafT. We might need 
no change in it if we now possessed that honest, fearless, 
faithful, patriotic press our parents once enjoyed, that 
was ever ready to denounce in unmeasured, unmistakable 
terms the perfidy and schemes of the paltry politicians 
and his polite, pilfering, pampered patron. 

With but few exceptions, what have we now but a 
horde of hireling, lying, advertising sheets, v/hose mock- 
ing displays of fantastic and hieroglyphic plasters add 
countless millions of useless, barefaced, robbing expense 
on the meagre consumption of the poor producer of all 
wealth, the laborer, and whose every column and parry- 

352 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

ing page of sound social alethiolog}^ are purchasable by 
either plundered pay or pappy patronage ; the mercenary 
mentor of the paying notoriety seeker; the venomous 
viper that is untiring in its efforts to undo what that 
silent, serious scythe of sophistry is and has been doing 
for bettering the condtion of all mankind, the printing 
press. That simple contrivance, with what complex and 
immeasurable possibilities; that unconscious, uncontrol- 
lable and unfathomable titanic agent, whose predestined 
potency in its dioramic dissemination of truths, as the 
instructor and promoter of the autonomy and equality 
of man, despite its dastardly doltish desecration by the 
sneering, slavish sophisms and silvery supercilious song 
of praise for scabrous, social sin by its snobbish, sniv- 
elling scribblers, all of which, if unchecked, must in- 
evitably wind up, as is plainly discernible to all observers 
and students of the results and the true analysis of the 
principles and attributes of mind, matter and truth, in 
the depopulation of the earth or the immutable establish- 
ment of the universal equality and brotherhood of man! 

Yes, for that snobbish, sniggling, sordid scribbler, his 
day is fast declining, as the average, reader now enter- 
tains a cutting contempt for his ectypical, extolling effu- 
sions of his partisan, political precepts and pompish 
patrons. 

Ninety-nine of every hundred of even only mediocre 
intelligence now, in taking up a copy of the labor-dogging, 
bigdoodle, drabbling, drossy dailies and their sleepy, 
hebdomadal harriers, are disposed to wink with their 
lame, left-handed ear when poring over the beguiling 
editorial or Associated Press dispatch, doctored by dizzy, 
drabbling ducklings, which indeed are calculated, regard- 
ing their incitement to his sensibilities, to be as truly 
diuretic as they are diurnal and diverse. So there is no 
hope for relief from this quarter, as the marts for the 
fair expression of public opinion — the news market — is by 
ever-vigilant capital wholly monopolized, and he who 
would dare raise his voice or use his pen for a just recom- 
pense to the producer would be stifled and find himself 
openly ostracised. 

353 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

We would need no change in it were it possible for 
the masses to select from their own ranks any one of the 
thousands who abound th ^rein of such men as Washing- 
ton, Jefferson, Jackson or Lincoln. The Lincoln who in 
touch of hand and thought was in unison with the honest, 
toiling, 'broad-minded, progressive, patriotic American; 
who, although the country was involved in one of the 
most deplorable and depleting wars of history, by his 
upright and faithful patriotism, thwarted, as long as it 
was possible to him, those life and death dealing financial 
enemies of our country ! He whose acts, with them, form 
an eternal illustration for all future contrast of fearless 
honesty with cowardly expediency ! Who to that bane 
of progress, the Eastern, egoistic nabob, appeared as a 
huge, ungainl}^, indefinable or enigmatical apathist, be- 
cause he refused to worship at their shrine. 

But to the masses, who, as of him, understood him, he 
was the predestined, providential patriot, ordered by fate 
at a most propitious period from the ranks of perfect men 
to reiterate and re-enact its decision and decree of perfec- 
tion of union, with equality of man. 

For the few factious, faint, foregoing reasons, and 
others of like nature, but too numerous to here mention, 
we are going to write to Mr. Nabob, since he will never 
see these few pedantic pages, as we do not give here 
banking jargon, puts and calls, yachting regulations, lawn 
tennis rules or McAllister's idiotic, idiomatic hypotyposis, 
personally, and inform him that we propose to amend, on 
his account solely, our Constitution, in order to provide 
him with an opportunity to put more of his ill-gotten 
"wealth in circulation, to manipulate matters and things 
in twelve direct, popular presidential elections, instead of 
one circumspect, circumventing, classular election, which 
can defeat .the will of the majority from electing their 
choice, and as heretofore they have had really but one 
alternative, they virtually must vote the Republican- 
boodle-ticket or the Democratic-doodle-ticket, as both 
were promptly paid to count out a patriotic-people's- 
ticket. On a little reflection it may be easily seen that 
the capitalist, as far as the number of his choice would 

354 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

be concerned, would be strictly in it for years, as it is 
reasonable to suppose that his party, whose shibboleth 
is protection for capital only, would receive five out of 
the twelve. And his party whose watchword and coun- 
tersign are, free trade markets and free bonds for Ameri- 
can labor only, might, with the aid of a few $50,000 ad- 
vances to the cause of liberty, for the post of ambassador 
to either that country with a brandy cork in the head 
of it, or may be, a mafia boot on the foot of it, get five 
more of the twelve, that would be ten for Nabob; and 
they dear people acting as volunteer whipper-in, by a 
herculean self-hoisting heave and harmonious heigh-ho! 
all-hands haul-away, bring up the rear with two. 

This would not be too much to ask, and we may here 
remark, that we are prompted to make the foregoing- 
suggestions because of our deep-rooted conviction, that 
the American mind is right and will always do right 
whenever it immerses itself in reflection, and that it is 
always perfectly safe to trust itself, and try any social 
innovation ; this conviction was the flambeau that fed 
and flamed our impulse ; although we are reluctantly led 
to believe that our loving neighbors, whom you all must 
have heard of in fabled song and story, those garish, 
genial, genteel, gentle geniuses, known only to the vulg'ar 
as native born aliens, British-American citizens, Ameri- 
can Protective Ass., etc., etc., that they will now accuse 
us of writing in this serious, snivelling strain of repel- 
lent revenge simply because that we did not get a post 
oflice ; but such thoughts and actions as those indulge 
in are the natural creations of the blind and the weak in 
dire distress, which distress they wish to relieve by retal- 
iating on the bright and strong, so in commonest charity 
we must ignore them, if not grant forgiveness before 
repentance, for we should know and realize that they 
suffer enough, through the hardships endured by all by 
the scorching curse of usury ! 

Plowman, cut another pint of oats from the ofif-horse's 
feed — the interest on the mortgage must be paid next 
month ! That evil is abroad and rampant in our land ; 
the dumb brute, even, is unjustly made to feel. Oh, Lord, 

355 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

Lord! How long will this last? When, oh, when, will 
that plundered prize be returned to us — the sublime 
equality and equity of the Father's Republic? Give us 
back the Republic of Washington and Lincoln, when the 
freeman, to the frenzied, ferocious tramp was but formu- 
lated and existed in the hooted, heathen, hellish, hover- 
ing hopes of that human leech, the mephitic mortgagee 
or mawkish, money-monging monomaniac. Do you dare 
not heed the word of warning, 3^ou nominally platonic 
politicians, thinkers, preachers, teachers, or have you 
learned beyond doubt that you are physical automatons 
of being, with naught truly spiritual or Godlike in you, 
and that the conscience you deludingly prate and babble 
so much about is nothing if not a peculiar poise or neu- 
ral state of that gray, spongy, mushy matter you name 
the brain? And that you could reverse this condition — 
but say, why worry or do it, as it would add no more pas- 
sion oil to your own machine, and if, knowing the times 
to be cruel, then wh}^ bother with chimerical justice? 
And learned that he who evolves highest thought and 
gives it happy expression and plainly marks out and 
chalks to life, deeds of noble action is hopelessly held as 
mad ! And that your Solons and sages in the select 
salon explain the disease as a burning brain fever by 
abnormal exultation over wild imaginations, and your 
savants, mocking with cutting cant and freezing satire, 
jeer the best poetical and the most lofty, prosaic 
expressed thoughts of noble minds and men, and martyr- 
ize our bravest, patriotic sons of progress ! 

Have you truly proved these heart-aching, murderous 
facts for those who believe and love a God, whether he is 
in Israel or abounds in boundless space? Ah, but your 
hounding, haunting conscience answers. No! Then all 
you perfidious politicians, parrying preachers, temporiz- 
ing teachers, and you who swim in the sickening, shad- 
owy, sinuous, slabby slime of that paralogizingly irri- 
gated, fertile field of sophistry, the college ; and you, the 
would-be dreamer of a better life at the bare expense of 
idle thought; and you, the charming, chiming chanter of 
your costless, rhythmic psalm ; and you the would-be 

356 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

minatory musician of the minuet or pedal-pressing pan- 
tomimist of that pulsating, puffing puppet, the organ, 
who would fain burst the ports of paradise with proudly 
purest, polyphonous, praising and plaintive sounds ! 

All — all readjust the fiery indicator on the blackened 
dial of your inner, smouldering souls and bid it not piti- 
lessly point, as now, to that languid, dull-eyed, hungry, 
homeless, heartless wanderer to lay prostrate that the 
usurious tyrant may stamp his feet on the accursedly corn- 
plotted creation of his greed and leave the impish impress 
on him, "White Slave !" Shun him ! Hound him ! Vora- 
cious brute! The tramp! Relight that dial with the 
phosphoric glow of commonest truth and justice, and 
with the fulcrum of the faith that is within you pry your 
scorching, heated indicator to that calming, cooling, 
soothing point of the human polar star, hope, that the 
weak and weary waif may rise with thee from being the. 
abject, guiltless slave of the blighting, burning, black- 
ened soul, to that plane with all, in common, loving touch 
of the soul-God, of which all are free, blessed, bright and 
brilliant sparks ! Heed the warning or soon suffer the 
sighing, sweeping, swingling sorrow, certain to follow 
continued injustice ! 

Dear, angelic, gentle reader, whose assured future, 
celestial, starry coronal is well deserved, by displaying 
such admirable, enviable patience and fortitude, by fol- 
lowing us through such seemingly interminable, hazy, 
mazy, bewildering jungles of tangling, tifting, tortuous, 
tousing figures, on such a bedraggling, dusky, stony, 
thorny, twinging, twisting trial, which positively con- 
vinces us of your Job-excelling forbearance. Hence we 
will presumptively attempt to do you a feeble, flimsy 
favor in preparing you for that now In sight — the decep- 
tive mirage of the open plain at the end of our plaguey, 
poaching path — but, after our own fashion, by striving to 
irritate and incite your latent sensibilities to ire, by our 
offering you the advice and forewarning that, on reading 
this book through, if it is the first for you of its kind, you 
are hereby trustingly cautioned not to believe that you 
know it all ; but, by reading it over several times, it may 

357 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

be the cause of opening for you a fortuitously felicitous 
and more fortunate line of investigation, which should 
be the paramount aim of all thoughtful and true Ameri- 
cans. Now, feeling that right here, by this advice, we 
have made our noblest stroke of duty, we will close with 
the only excuse we have to offer our poetasters : 

Doggerel No. 2. 

Such was our hurling haste, we had no time to waste 
In crossing t's, dotting i's, or marking commas ; 

So, for the cash you're out, you need not strut and shout, 
But smile, and shake, with truly yours, A. M. Thomas. 



358 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 



ADDENDUM. 

CRITICAL, BUT PARTIAL, REVIEW OF THE 
BOOK, ''PROGRESS AND POVERTY." 

Having admiringly viewed, if not tasted, some of tlie 
^exquisite beauties and soul-feeding fruits of interest, ' 
now let us briefly review its aesthetically nominal divi- 
sions, and note the diffractive dissertations diffused by 
the doctors of economic ditheism on that diaphoretic 
dicephalous duad facetiously named and captiously 
dubbed, interest; or, in other words, let us depone by 
deploying a few of the diverse conclusions arrived at by 
some of our would-be social philosophers, when com- 
menting on that two-headed offshoot, or the illegitimate, 
feverish monstrosity of our social organism, or statute 
laws, interest-rent. Interest, or something for scheming, 
shape and style, may be said to be, and is, known as of 
two faces under one hood, namely: First — That face, 
kind or name that is conferred on the individual or cor- 
poration through an unjust law, the power or virtue of 
collecting or charging money or its equivalent for the 
use of land, which should be and rightfully is the nat- 
urally common property of each and all, or what is called 
ground rent (or interest) to a privileged class arise?* It 
is called rent. Second — That name, kind or face that is 
conferred on the individual or corporation through an 
unjust law, the power or virtue of collecting or charging 
money or its equivalent for the use of money, which 
should be and properly and rightfully is the naturally 
artificial common property sprite or circulating medium 
of the whole people, which is universally and generally 
known as interest, but some hypocritical writers, in order 
to confuse the real wealth producer, confound the word 

* The besetting danger is not so much of embracing falsehood for 
truth as of mistaking part of the truth f^r the whole. — John Stuart 
Mill. 

359 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

interest with just profits or natural increase obtained by 
the personal application of the products of past labor. 
Now, the first part of the question is, From what power 
or authority or virtue does the payment or collection of 
ground rent (or interest) to a privileged class arise? It 
arises by virtue of the entangled, counfounding hiero- 
glyphics placed upon a piece of paper or parchment by a 
usurping gQvernment, or the condensation of statutory 
law, called a patent or warranty deed. This, indeed, may 
be termed a most unwarranted, unjust, presumptuous 
and peculiar kind of usufruct ; that is, the right to charge 
and collect, to use and enjoy the natural increase or 
profits arising from the production of labor and land, 
without self-participation or the application of self-labor 
power to the land. Thus we see that rent arises from, 
or depends on, an unjust, condensed human law, in- 
scribed on paper, the tokens or piece evidences of which 
are called patents or warranty deeds. The second part 
of the question is. From what power or authority or 
virtue does the payment or collection of money — rent (or 
interest) — to or by a privileged class arise? It arises 
from or by virtue of the incomparably incongruous and 
puzzling hierography, deduced and condensed from state 
law, enacted by purchased political mockingbirds, trained 
in the legal social prison of human blight and blasphe- 
mously, yet skilfully daubed with diluted soot upon 
paper, by the several usurping governments, thereby ren- 
dering it collectable by law from the righteously would- 
be defaulter, the same as interest for the loan of land 
or rent, which is the Siamese twin of rent for money or 
interest. We see by one of the comparatively late, labori- 
ous lucubrations, or lusty, luxating books on political 
economy, where ground rent is abidingly condemned by 
a pitiful endeavor to justify religiously rent for money or 
interest. By the mere reference to the book, of course, 
the sincerity of its author stands challenged. We are 
here forced to admit that we would not consider the 
book worthy of extended notice, serious criticism, or at- 
tempt at refutation were it not for numerous newspaper 
advertisements claiming for it a circulation of one and 
one-half million copies, and lest that its antilogy or self- 

360 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

contradictions and individual dogmatisms might make or 
cause a formidable spread of social toxine, or poisonous 
half truths or whole falsities, we will endeavor to produce 
a probationary, procrastinating antidote by pointing out 
some of its most glaringly adverse reasonings or deduce- 
ments. The book referred to is called "Progress and 
Poverty," by H. George. (We will refer to it as p: and 
p. and by the numbered page.) "Out of their own 
mouths shall come the words that condemn them, We- 
say so." "She (liberty)* will have no half-service, * h« * 
for liberty means justice, and justice is the natural law — 
the law of health and symmetry and strength, of frater- 
nity and co-operation (pages 391-2)." Now, then, jus- 
tice must be the foundation and culmination for all eco^ 
nomic, philosophic or scientific truths. These truths, 
then, must have for their test a perpetual readiness for 
verification and challenge, for investigation, without fear, 
favor or limit. They admiringly greet every trial accord- 
ing to its magnitude. They smile on high and low analy- 
sis and criticism. They calmly dally like a dabster on 
the chin of the most hypercritical skeptic. They chari- 
tably chide human authority and faith. They frown on 
the philosophisms of schools and so-called masters. They 
never banish the true pilgrim-philomath to the puffy, 
putative pages of perversive precedents, nor haughtily 
point to the mouldy, musty maxims of evil, economic, 
exorcising expositors. But they do demand their inter- 
pretation and substantiation through the laws of logical 
induction, and that the human senses, so far as is possi- 
ble, be tempered by oblations of nature's love and justice. 
The book, on pages 262-3, graphically defines land rent, 
from which we quote : "It, rent, is a fresh and continu- 
ous robbery that goes on every day and every hour. 
"^ * * It is a toll levied upon labor constantly and 
continuously. * * ^ It claims the just reward of the 
capitalist (hie!*) >i^ * * It debases and embrutes and 
embitters. * * * It darkens faith in the human soul, 
and across the reflection of a just and merciful Creator 
draws the veil of a hard and blind and cruel fate! It is 



I 



* The words in parenthesis are ours. 

361 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

not merely a robbery in the past ; it is a robbery in the 
present — a robbery that deprives of their birthright the 
infants that are now coming into the world." (How fit- 
tingly these selected phrases describe the curse of all 
interest !) *'Why should we hesitate about, making short 
work of such a system? Because I was robbed yesterday 
and the day before, and the day before that, is that any 
reason that I should suffer myself to be robbed to-day 
and to-morrow? Any reason why I should conclude that 
the robber has acquired a vested right to rob me? If the 
land (or money) belong to the people, why continue to 
permit land (or money) owners to take the rent (or inter- 
est), or compensate them in any manner for the loss of 
rent (or interest)? Consider what rent, (or interest) is. 
It does not a;rise spontaneously from (money or) land ; it 
is due to nothing that the land (or money) owners 
(rather loaners) have done. "^^ * "^ Let the land (or 
money) holders have, if you please, all that the possession 
of the (money or) land would give them in the absence of 
the rest of the community. But rent, the creation of the 
whole community (or interest, the toll levied upon labor 
constantly and continuously), * "^ ^necessarily be- 
longs to. the whole community. Why not make short 
work of the matter, anyhow? For this robbery is not like 
the robbery of a horse or a sum of money that ceases 
with the act." The foregoing is but a sample of the 
author's reasoning for the abolishment or confiscation 
of ground or land rent. We certainly must agree with 
him there, since the very small conceptive and reasoning 
powers dealt out to us we find totally inadequate, even 
when aided by the most starry eloquence, to reconcile 
justice with robbery in any of our well-nigh annihilating 
attempts. On page 237 we read : ''This, then, is the 
remedy for the unjust and unequal distribution of wealth 
apparent in modern civilization, and for all the evils 
which flow from it: We must make land common prop- 
erty. ^ "^ * That the unequal ownership of land 
necessitates the unequal distribution of wealth. And, as 
in the nature of things, unequal ownership of land is in- 
separable from the recognition of individual property in 
land," (then the "private titles" of us land loaners assure 

362 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

our salvation — Hosanna!), "it necessarily follows that the 
only remedy for the unjust distribution of wealth is in 
making land common property." But, according to this 
reasoning, there must be a common ownership or equal 
land holdings. Say, that no head of a family shall occupy, 
possess or own and use more than forty acres of first- 
class, sixty of second, or eighty of third class, eighty to 
be the absolute maximum, or more than one city lot, fifty 
by one hundred and fifty feet. This would not necessi- 
tate a per capita distribution of land, which to some 
seems to loom up as terrifyingly impossible. But, with 
one fell swoop, the following dogmatism, page 236, cuts 
ofif or mows down all authority and reasoning and sets up 
as invulnerable the apodictic and infallible self-evident 
tenet of the author that, *'An equal distribution of land 
is impossible." So "if that don't clinch it, further on he 
says : "Nor is any remedy worth considering that does 
not fall in with the natural direction of social develop- 
ment, and swim, so to speak, wath the current of the 
times." N. B. — So if you, or your philosophy is not in 
the swim, you are warned, you had, better keep mum, or 
mumble in the sacred, silent secrecy of your shabby, shad- 
ow^y shanty. In support of the facts collected by the 
author, which are universally admitted, except by selfish 
beneficiaries and their cackling cuckoos, he quotes largely 
from eminent authors, as, for instance : "The claim of 
the landholder is altogether subordinate to the general 
policy of the state, '"^ "^ '•' when private property in 
land is not expedient (to be expedient would require the 
masses to be barbarians, cannibals or savages, necessi- 
tating hard work and semi-starvation to force them to 
-think and reason) it is unjust. ^^ * * The land of 
Ireland, the land of every country, belongs to the people 
of that country. ^ ^ ^ What right have the land- 
lords to the accession (increase or addition) of riches that 
comes to them from the general progress of society, with- 
out work or risk on their part?" — John Stuart Mill. Next 
he quotes from that lofty, living, martyred mind, now 
apparently in declension, before whose name is men- 
tioned we should moisten our lips with sweetest nectar, 
"Herbert Spencer" (P. and P. quotes more fully than 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

the following), who, in writing of the equal partitions 
of the land, says: "Such a doctrine (equal division of 
land as common property, or letting it out to the highest 
bidder) is consistent with the highest state of civiliza- 
tion ; may be carried out without involving a community 
of goods, and need cause no serious revolution in exist- 
ing arrangements. * * * a state of things so ordered 
would be in perfect harmony with the moral law. * ^ * 
Clearly, therefore, on such a system, the earth might be 
enclosed, occupied and cultivated in entire subordination 
to the law of equal freedom." — H. Spencer. The author, 
after depicting in flaming characters the ever-eating evils, 
ever ebbing away the eclat and energy of the nation, con- 
sequent on the admission and collection by individuals 
of such robbery as land or ground rent, and quoting from 
such acknowledged authorities in order to strengthen and 
maintain his position in regard to the collation of past 
and present generally admitted economic, social certain- 
ties, he goes on to say (page 291) : "We should satisfy 
the law of justice ; we should meet all economic require- 
ments, by at one stroke abolishing all private titles," etc. 
Then we find, hidden away among the thorny roses, the 
advice to.be guided by the tactics of tyranny's founders 
and have recourse to old forms. We are told by doing 
so "we may glide fast and far with the current." But is 
not this the current of progress? Does it ever counsel 
or countenance the fiendish devices of the retrograding 
tactics of usurping tyrants? Is this the current one must 
needs jump in, in order to be in the swim? On page 292 
we read : "Let them continue to call it their land. Let 
them buy and sell, and bequeath and devise it." And, 
again : "No owner of land need be dispossessed (neither 
might he be dispossessed under an equal allotment, until 
a bonafide applicant made due entry and paid for im- 
provements), and no restriction need be placed upon the 
amount of land any one could hold." Now, is not this 
the previously and loudly condemned private property 
in land, and the noisily deplored unequal ownership of 
land, the previously attributed source of all social evils? 
Are these proofs of consistent and sane sincerity? Are 
we to perpetuate a nation composed of wage serfs, or 

364 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

home makers and owners, and landed' aristocracy, and 
wandering paupers, with their rolled homes on their 
backs, like the snail? Suppose that internal revenue was 
abolished, as it should be, to which all are agreed, as 
also all tax or license for the manufacture and sale or 
distribution of all American productions — commence free 
trade at home first — and that a true American or national 
— not foreign or international, as outsiders can tend to 
their own affairs for some time to come — free trade, 
which seems to be the bugaboo of some and the bugbear 
of others, etc., was established, and that, instead of a 
graduated income tax, that, as you will, a land tax sup- 
planted all internal taxes, tolls, licenses and revenues, 
what then? Would not the wage w^orker be as badly off 
as before, when the land loaner's sigh of surprise had 
subsided, if not worse? Labor must work land, or all 
must starve ! Then the land loaner or holder would be 
really king! The almighter arbiter, who could dictate 
to labor its wages, or the other dreadful alternative ! The 
American title-lord-privates that you would fain set up 
must retrieve themselves by combining to reduce wages 
and advance to present retail prices the productions of 
his land and life or death impelled labor ! Would not 
the laborer be powerless and the American lord-private- 
title all-powerful? Also, what invitingly charming 
temptations there would be for bribery and perjury and 
other evasive methods, ''to put a premium on unscrupu- 
lousness and a tax upon conscience." In fanciful corrobo- 
ration of the foregoing dilemma of the laborer, and the 
unbending posture of a lord-private-title, let us read, on 
pages 226-7, P- ^i^d Pv where widely known and uncon- 
tradicted facts are not only admitted, but individually 
asseverated, as follows : "But land will not starve, like 
laborers; * >i^ * its owners can wait." (Is not this 
the potentially potent, social bane of private titles in 
land?) * * * ''Suppose the combination (for increase 
of wages) to be so thorough as to include all agricultural 
laborers, and to prevent from doing so all who might be 
tempted to take their places. * * * If cultivation 
thus comes to a deadlock, the land owners would lose 
only their rent, while the land improved by lying fallow. 

365 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

But the laborers would starve, ^' ^ ^^ and in a gen- 
eral deadlock landowners could live (take this with a 
grain of salt), while laborers of all sorts must starve or 
emigrate. (In a country and in an age of steam and 
electricity, free schools, and free and secret ballot, and 
cheap, omniferous, insuperable and prolific printing press ; 
if laboring mankind does not peremptorily demand, 
through a combination of their votes — which they can 
never do while lured by the song-and-dance fadism of 
economic, hand-organ pedagogues, from just, genuine 
and demonstrable reforms — and by a loathing or retching 
of the old, musty, wornout phantom of politician, parti- 
tion parties, the natural wages of labor : "The produce of 
labor constitutes the natural recompense or wages of 
labor." — Adam Smith. And also demand the natural 
birthright of all mankind, the equal, unfettered openness 
to the occupancy and best possible use of land, as, "The 
land of every country belongs to the people of that coun- 
try." — J. Stuart Mill. If they do not demand these things, 
which are born in nature's law of freedom, reared in her 
law of justice, and live in her law of truth, then we say, 
let them starve or emigrate to sulphurous shores !) 
* "^ * -But the fixed and definite nature of land enables 
land owners to combine much more easily and efficiently 
than either laborers or capitalists. How easy and effi- 
cient their combination is, there are many historical exam- 
ples. And the absolute necessity for the use of land, and 
the certainty in all- progressive countries that it must 
increase in value, produce among land owners, without 
any formal combination, all the effects that could be 
produced by the most rigorous combination among labor- 
ers and capitalists." Then from where would all those 
promised, ecstatic blessings flow and human-elevating 
fruits in torrents on us pour, even if by law we consti- 
tuted or appointed, as second-hand tax collectors, our 
superior, private-land-titled heroes of supernal attributes, 
even the most remote, smoky benefits would be but titu- 
lar, indeed! How hinder them to exact almost retail 
prices for wholesale productions? How hinder them to 
charge more for improvements, not the bare land com- 
petition could not serve? How hinder them to compel 

366 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

laborers to work for anything that they may choose to 
offer? For again we read : "Deprive a laborer of oppor- 
tunity of employment and he will soon be anxious to get 
work on any terms." An admirable, Shylock, speculative 
conclusion! As well deprive him of liberty, light and 
life! Dead dogs can't yelp. But is justice the fountain- 
head from which flows this sacred power of deprivation 
or the holy law of title-lord-private? And, once more, on 
page 245 we read: "If one man can command the land 
upon which others must labor, he can appropriate the 
produce of their labor as the price of his permission to 
labor." We are promised a genuine frosted, fruit cake 
millenium when all rent is taken in taxation (all rent 
would be about $8,000,000,000, or $10 per month pension 
for every man, woman and child, as well as a million 
poodle dogs and pussy cats, in the United States), and all 
taxation is taken from land. As though it was not taken 
from land by labor. It is impossible to reconcile the 
canons of taxation with the author's idea of a land tax 
and the benefits that labor would derive from it. As all 
taxes and the whole human race under any regime are 
paid from and supported by the production or action of 
labor, in connection with the other chief factor of produc- 
tion, land, there being but two principal factors, labor 
and land, as all the product of past labor, or real capital, 
as it is sometimes called, is perishable and must be repro- 
duced to be. Capital, or matter used for, or in, reproduc- 
tion, is a form of land, being the crystallization of land 
and labor power, its potentially direct, or indirect, repro- 
ductive attributes or power being its sole value, which 
requires labor constantly and continuously to care for, or 
with, during its temporary incommissibility or the semes- 
tral interim. As, for instance, if the bushel of potatoes, 
acorn, cow% bird, fishes, etc., are not labored with, or are 
eaten only once, neither will make very prolific seed or 
real capital, if the locomotive is not properly labored 
with by being securely housed and its rheumatic joints 
rubbed with liniment and fed with diluent diamonds and 
purest crystal water, etc., it will not pull much iron ore 
from the land to reproduce its kind. Not so, my friend, 
with the $1,000,000 national bank note (the best the world 

367 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

ever smiled on), clearing house certificate or perpetual 
pass to any star in space, bank demand certificate of 
metallic deposit or seismic germ of the barren baron's 
brain, or even the duly despicably despised United States 
Treasury note. Neither requires but little labor to be, 
and a modulated, intoned breath of poison-ladened air 
v^ill creatingly rake, reap and reave its kind from the 
bead of brav^ny brother's brow^, and but requiring such 
labor as the fascinating formation of a brilliant, budding 
rosette to be laboriously planted in the rakishly radiant 
and ruffled shirt front of the fribble, there secure from 
rot and rust, yes, and even stain, if the bearer chews not 
Navy plug. 

Land is the fixed, latent or potential and inert force 
in production. And when devising any form, regulation 
or scheme of human law to maintain society together on 
just or righteous principles and to ''render unto Caesar 
what is Caesar's" we should always remember the other 
higher force, labor; that it is the active, initial, positive 
and voluntary force of all production, without which all 
capital would change form or, in common parlance, van- 
ish; but through labor's volition it may exist, but never 
increase .of itself, notwithstanding the wine in my cellar 
growing stale. The canons are: First — "That it bear 
as lightly as possible upon production." But the private, 
single, title tax (never mind constitutional foibles of rep- 
resentative taxation) prpposes to put it upon land, a chief 
factor of production, which would virtually be placing it 
direct on labor, for labor must apply itself to land to live, 
and therefore must pay taxes before it can apply itself 
to land, and it per consequent proposes that he only 
who shall not labor on land shall be exempt from all taxa- 
tion. Indeed, it matters not to labor who the titular tax- 
payer is, where justice governs, but for labor the supreme 
question is how to recover its birthright, the open, omni- 
parous opportunity to the possession of land, the public 
title of tenure to read, all land, for best use with individual 
manipulation. If "taxation necessarily lessens the incen- 
tive to production," what then? Should all our laborers 
become lawyers and bankers? Let us suppose that the 
land loaners or holders who do not exploit, cultivate or 

368 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

I improve their land (except by verbal or written falsifica- 
1 tion) had to pay in taxes the full rental value, and suppose 
j that they found it more cumbersome than profitable to 
j continue to hold their private title and that it reverted 
i to the state? Would he Avho was willing to improve, 
I occupy and use the private title, or, rather, the land, be 
: taxed for the privilege, or for his useful activity? In 
j either case, then, why not all of us become usurious or 
I legal bums? The second canon is, "That it be easily and 
cheaply collected, and fall as directly as may be upon the 
ultimate payer." The first part of this rule or canon will 
be considered by most as being rather cheap. AVho are 
the ultimate payers? Are not the consumers? Beyond 
all doubt the consumer pays it on what he consumes and 
must, or should, do so under any method of taxation, 
even though he be a miserable mendicant, murderously 
mislaying mumbled supplications for your intellectual 
illumination; and this is just, if it is brought or pushed 
to an arbitrary ending. Suppose that an individual works 
hard and constant all year on forty acres of land, and real- 
izes, say, $1,000 income over absolute personal necessi- 
ties, would it not be right and just for him to pay taxes 
for the regulation and support of societary maintenance, 
from which society he consumed or withdrew his $i,ooo? 
Without this society he could not draw it; true he might 
have had the raw material ; he could not consume it all, 
for too much hog ends in scurvy ! And suppose another 
individual has drawn from society, or consumed, $10,000 
for the sale of musically monotonous wind, or the noisy, 
intorted intonation of a legal jawsmith, or professor of 
barratry, or, in other words, for the sale of advice-in-law, 
which should be so simple that all those governed by it, 
except idiots, etc., should understand it. Would it not be 
meet and just to tax the commodity-law-huckster with 
geometrical gradation? For he unmercifully taxed the 
brain, forty-acre, and muscle capitalist. Oh, what of the 
banker bachelor^ who dedicates to his physical demands 
and mental desires $100,000, drawn or consumed from 
society? Well may we ask, in the words of J. S. Mill, 
"A¥hat right have the (money loaners) landlords to the 
accession (interest or addition) of riches that come to 

369 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

them from the general progress of society, without work, 
risk or economizing on their part?" And, we may add, 
without divine attributes? But are we to answer Mill's 
question by the words of Malthus? "That there comes 
human beings into the world for whom nature refuses 
to provide and who have not the slightest right to any 
share in the existing store of the necessaries of life" (ex- 
cept sufficient to keep the brain and muscles in order 
while creating wealth for others) "and (nature) extorts 
obedience to her mandates by the force of hunger, pesti- 
lence, war, crime, mortality, infanticide, prostitution and 
syphilis." Now, who will dare to say that the bachelor, 
buckish banker or loving, lustrous land leaner have not 
a divine right to the imposition of an income tax, with- 
out work or any return, or the collection of interest rent, 
or resterintent? The third canon is, "That it be certain." 
All non-mercenary, fair-minded, clear-brained economists 
will agree that a graduated, impartial income tax would 
be more certain, bear more equally, be more easily and 
cheaply collected and bear more lightl}^ on production 
than any other up to date either devised or conjured. 
(Our internal revenue tax, collected by the general gov- 
ernment, while bearing unequally, yet costs less than 3 
per cent, for all services and collection, while our circu- 
lating medium, obtained through bank loans alone of 
over $4,000,000,000 of loans, costs over $400,000,000, or 
over 40 per cent, on the $1,000,000,000 outside the United 
States Treasury, of our $1,500,000,006 of national money 
stock. So much for cheap and dear income tax, if col- 
lected by parasites or the people !) But there is an in- 
cessantly tiresome tooting vibrating through the thin, 
tilting air of silly, senseless argument against its adop- 
tion. An argument or reasoning which has a similar 
effect, and is as true to nature as that elaborate and 
graphic description given in patent pill posters known 
only to the learned as "that tired feeling," which may be 
condensed into those few words. It would give tempta- 
tion for lawbreaking and chicanery. We will simply say 
this is one, not only of the strongest, but most fiendishly 
cloaked statements, or repetitions of, justifications of, or 
excuses for, public crime or social evil that it is possible 

370 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

for any public writer to conjure or copy. It hints, as it 
were, to a premium on selfishness, and intimates or in- 
trigues with socially sinful chicanery; it inveigles the 
doughy brain of the doughty economic student and 
seduces the mushy matter in the minor's mental matrix 
by inculcating the idea, with subtle suggestion, the belief 
that public deception or dishonesty is in no way crimi- 
nal, or rather to inculcate in the minds of the masses 
the motto that mankind should never pay a just debt 
until publicly forced by a last and forceful resort. The 
fourth canon is, ''That it bear equally." Would the land 
monopolist pay all the taxes for himself and the money 
monopolist as well, although the latter is, 'Tn reality 
devoting his labor to the production of bread" and butter, 
as truly as though he were not only a farmer, but also a 
baker in a Baxter street cellar, or slopping in a Long 
Island dairy? Would the forty-acre monopolist have to 
pay all taxes for governmental support, not only for him- 
self and family, but as well- for the real estate fakir and 
family, who really produces wheat, as though he did not 
ply a jacknife to keep his nails in trim, and then also 
have to chip in one cent an acre to assist in defraying 
the extra expenses of government troops in arresting, 
stabbing or shooting the pauper wage slaves, of course, 
in chief supported by the beautiful, spontaneous fruits 
of borrowed, riskless money, those serfs, created by 
monopoly from the sweat of the railroad magnate, should 
they murmur whenever the caprice hunched him to cut 
down their meagre rations, while' he was really paying 
taxes to some foreign potentate, mayhap, while gadding 
around taking silent lessons, perhaps in Egypt or any 
other stamping ground, of former tyrant masters? On 
pages 240-5 of P. and P. we find that private property 
in land, as well as rent, is unsparingly denounced as a 
wrong and a robbery, which scathing accusations aptly 
apply to the private property in money, as well as inter- 
est. We read : ''As a man belongs to himself, so his 
labor, when put in concrete form, belongs to him. And 
for this reason that which a man makes or produces is 
his own, as against all the world. ""^ "■•' "^ There can 
be no other rightful title, because (first) there is no other 

371 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

natural right from which any other title can be derived. 

* * * With what other is man by nature clothed, save 
the power of exerting his own faculties? From what 
else, then, can the right of possessing and controlling 
things be derived? Nature acknowledges no ownership 
or control in man, save as the result of exertion. ^ ^ ^ 
She (nature) recognizes no claim but that of labor, and 
recognizes that without respect to the claimant. ^^ ^ ^ 
The laws of nature are the decrees of the Creator. There 
is written in them no recognition of any right save that 
of labor. ^ >!^ * Hence, as nature gives only to labor, 
the exertion of labor in production is the onh'^ title to 
exclusive possession. * * "^ If a man be rightfully 
entitled to the produce of his labor, then no one can be 
rightfully entitled to the ownership of anything which 
is not the produce of his labor. * * * This right of 
ownership excludes the possibility of any other right 
of ownership. * * >k jf production gives to the pro- 
ducer the right to exclusive possession and enjoyment, 
there can rightfully be no exclusive possession or enjoy- 
ment of anything not the production of labor (then, what 
of the justified right of rent for money?), and the recog- 
nition of private property in land (and money) is wrong, 

* * * When non-producers can claim as rent (or in- 
terest) a portion of the wealth created by producers, the 
right of the producers to the fruits of their labor is to 
that extent denied. There is no escape from this posi- 
tion.^'' Now, on reading such a clearly choice collection 
of sound reasonings against private property or titles in 
land and its consequent collection of rent, then reading 
others before referred to, and also on page 292 P. and P., 
'T do not propose either to purchase or to confiscate pri- 
vate property in land. ^ ^ ^ Let them continue to 
call it their land. Let them buy and sell, and bequeath 
and devise it," etc., we must acknowledge that we would 
have charitably ascribed it to temporary mental aberra- 
tion were it not that, long after the nine preceding parts 
of this book were written, we were handed, for the first 
time, a copy of P. and P., and also a copy of the "land 



* The italicising and words in parenthesis are ours. 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

question," wherein the reader is referred to P. and P. 
''for a detailed examination of the whole social problem," 
and also in a footnote the reader is told of the warm 
friendship extended by some landlords toward the "de- 
tailed examination of the whole social problem." Now, 
the ''land question" was published in New York as late as 
1889, or ten years after P. and P. was copyrighted (ac- 
cording to the copy of each now before us), in which 
"Land Question," by the same author, we read, "and 
shudder at the cat under the meal," on page 44, L. Q.: 
"Do that (tax land full rental value), and without any 
talk of dispossessing landlords, without any use of the 
ugly word 'confiscation'" (oh, what sugar sophistry! 
what serous, silly, servility, seemingly arising from a sick- 
ening fear of being sent from the swim to a Stygian seat 
in social shades!), "the landlords would be left the abso- 
lute and unqualified possessors of — their title deeds and 
r.onveyance." Let the readers weigh for themselves how 
that last will chime with past admissions that we have 
noted, as well as the following, on page 245, P. and P. : 
"For, as labor cannot produce without the use of land, 
the denial of the equal right to the use of land is neces- 
sarily the denial of the right of labor to its own produce." 
And again : "If one man can command the land upon 
which others must labor, he can appropriate the produce 
of their labor as the price of his permission to labor." 
Whether land be taxed single or remain forever untaxed, 
or neither, that is exactly in virtue what the land holder 
of absolute title and money loaner can and will do, ac- 
cording, not only to P. and P.'s numerous admissions, 
but most assuredly according to the instinctive feelmgs 
of all men, knowing that either financial, political or prop- 
erty inequality gives unqualified poAver to any individual 
over any other not so unrighteously favored. Something 
that would indicate a remittent aberration is to be found 
in the oversight of quoting from Herbert Spencer to try 
to support the single tax faddism without abolishing in- 
dividual, perpetually private titles or rights ; mark par- 
ticularly the words quoted, as follows : "Instead of leas- 
ing his acres from an isolated proprietor, the farmer 
would lease them from the nation. Instead of paying his 

373 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

rent to the agent of Sir John or his Grace, he would pay 
it to an agent or deputy agent of the community. Stew- 
ards would be public officials instead of private ones, and 
tenancy (temporary possession) the only land tenure (or 
holding). A state of things so ordered would be in per- 
fect harmony with the moral law. Under it all men 
would be equally landlords ; all men would be alike free 
to become tenants. * * * Clearly, therefore, on such 
a system, the earth might be enclosed, occupied and cul- 
tivated in entire subordination to the law of equal free- 
dom." — Herbert Spencer. Clearly, therefore, there is no 
mincing matters here ! No fearful crouching to estab- 
lished criminal customs ! No hallucination of the danger 
of being wretchedly anchored on the miry banks of the 
social swim ! No inefficacious, though sweet-scented, 
balm for deeply wounded, intellective instinct ! No one, 
even with the slightest shadow of justice, can insinuate 
to Herbert Spencer, from these words, any insidious de- 
sign, in an evil hour, in launching a fad or ism built on 
baseless, chimerical suppositions, but in the name of 
fundamental truths, yet lacking the chief principle or 
tenet of commonest justice, equality of rights in birth, 
life and- death, that is, the fearless, open, indiscriminate 
accessibility to land ; and neither to apparently laimch it 
in order to divert or distract the public mind, at a most 
propitious time, from the calm, intelligent agitation and 
probable realization of genuinely tangible and true re- 
forms, generated and digested in purest, strictest equity 
and justness by noble, patriotic, unselfish minds ! In P. 
and P., like in other works of "a detailed examination 
(containing fitful commendation and condemnation of 
each part) of the whole social problem," or laborious 
works on political economy, in their endeavors to thereby 
float an excuse for interest or rent, there can be found a 
great deal of misleading, economic jargon or babbling 
bosh, calculated or intended to confuse or confound the 
unwary reader, or the positive maxim, particularly in the 
frequent use of, and reference, to that awe-inspiring word, 
law, as the law of rent, the law of wages, etc. On page 
125 we find the very earnest, but ridiculously far- 
fetched similie, to the law of gravitation, where we read 

374 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

that : "The law of rent rests on the fundamental prin- 
ciple (what verbal football), which is to political econ- 
omy what the attraction of gravitation is to physics," etc. 
A little physic might make reparation for the abuse and 
damage to ideas and language. Now, the meaning of 
the word law, in this connection, is a fixed or constant, 
immutable or immovable, fundamental truth or fact, like 
unto the eternally fixed and humanly indefinable princi- 
ple, law or order of action of the bodies of the universe, 
which is, and must be, independent of and supernal to 
any human action. But, if such were the case, then 
how futile the mortal attempt to decry interest or rent! 
In this sense there is no such thing or eternal rule or 
principle as the law of interest or rent. But there is such 
a law of wages, if "The produce of labor constitutes the 
natural recompense or wages of labor." — Adam Smithy 
etc. It is true that economic thinkers and writers, in 
regard to rent, interest, etc., have sought out the princi- 
pal points of their effects and cause, and have critically 
examined their rule of direction and growth, and after- 
wards formulated their thoughts on the rule of action 
regarding the current of social good or evil, and then 
■chained them to paper by the aid of printer's ink, which 
by some inexpressible agency might have been reflective- 
ly, yet indelibly, indented on the brain of idiots ; the 
whole result by some is looked upon as infallible, and 
hopelessly called law ! We are also at times amusingly, 
if not confusedly entertained at reading of the "harmony 
and correlation of the laws of distribution," namely, rent, 
interest, wages. Are we to cast aside as ridiculous, social 
ethics or the moral law, and bid the "devil take the hind- 
most"? Otherwise, where can the harmony of the law of 
robbery, social evil and wrong come in, in cadenced, 
chiming chant with the law of justice, social happiness 
and natural right? If the produce of labor is the just 
reward of and belongs to labor, how can wages harmon- 
ize or correlate with rent, that is, robbery, etc., the same 
as interest is? Wages may reciprocate with the product 
of past labor, or capital, as some love to call it, by repro- 
ducing it for the use of it. But the interest pumper or 
capitalist does not understand that kind of mutual bene- 

375 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 



fit, interchange or reciprocity. If the correlation of 
"standing in opposite relation" was meant, then it might 
be said to harmonizingly correlate. For the abiding 
rule is for money and land loaners to ever work in har- 
mony against the law of nature and labor ! Let us set 
some of the condensations of those so-called laws, some- 
what in harmony with the dicephalous duad, with two 
■ heads and a large tail, and see if the tail will wag the 
heads: 



Laws, by P. and P., called 

THE TRUE STATEMENT. 

RENT depends on the 
margin of cultivation, ris- 
ing as it falls and falling as 
it rises. WAGES depend 
on the margin of cultiva- 
tion, falling as it falls and 
rising as it rises. INTER- 
EvST (its ratio with wages 
being fixed by the net 
power of. increase, which at- 
taches to capital"^) depends 
on the margin of cultiva- 
tion, falling as it falls and 



Statement current in sev- 
eral PSEUDO-POLITICO- 
ECONOMIC WORKS. 

RENT depends on the 
margin of cultivation, rising 
as it falls and falling as it 
rises. WAGES depend 
upon the ratio between the 
number of laborers and the 
amount of capital devoted to 
their employment. INTER- 
EST depends on the equa- 
tion between the supply of 
and demand for capital ; or, 
as is stated of profits, upon 
wages (or the cost of 
labor*), rising as wages fall 
and falling as wages rise. 



Our statement, or a purely parboiled parody of parataxis 
(single taxes) Rent, depends on that frosted, frouzy relic 
of conquest's divine right doctrine, arbitrarily applied, and 
upheld by the philosophisms or sophistry notched in our 
social organization, notwithstanding our vociferously pre- 
tentious denunciation of it. And whenever, if at all, affected 
by the margin of cultivation, rising as it falls on account of 
the market, nominal, or exchangeable (not intrinsic) value 
given to land through density or pressure of population, 
and consequqent aggregate increase of human necessity for 

* The italics are ours, but the words in parenthesis are not ours. 



. PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

the products or use of land and labor. And rent rises in 
the aggregate as the margin of cultivation rises or expands, 
which rising or expansion is a crowding out, or increase, of 
population, which means an increase of labor, which in gen- 
eral means an increase of production, which, under our 
present iniquitous social motion, means an increase or rise 
in quantity of rent, which also must mean a general rise 
in rent, since the ratio of landholders or loaners are ever 
decreasing in proportion to the increase of wage-workers. 
In an honest, clear, economic inquiry the ratio of rent must 
be measured or determined in real production, never in its 
fictitious representative, money. Here generally is where the 
willing bhnd follow the dead blind; for if by scheming, 
scoundrelly manipulation of the community circulating reck- 
oning tokens, that $5 of rent, reduced from $10, when the 
latter procured ten bushels of wheat only, would now pur- 
chase five days' labor or ten bushels of wheat, then rent 
has not fallen measured in production, but virtually has 
risen when even though it is stoutly denied, and under 
such conditions wages do not fall measured in productions, 
but only those who have accumulated money, not actual 
wealth, benefit by the iniquity at the expense of all those who 
have not accumulated money, if such money be still upheld 
in its legal endowments by the said great majority of dupes 
in such a community, and under those conditions productive 
industry staggers, suffers and temporarily suspends for a 
surprise breathing spell to once again attempt, in a seemingly 
vain endeavor, to determine as to the certainty of who are 
the greatest fools ! Let us ask, as to the law of rent : 
Where does this rent-line come in in Europe where those 
quoted rent lawmakers felt their ideas ? 

Wages depend on the margin left, or growlingly or 
grudgingly allowed after the ravenous appetities of riskless 
land and money or capital loaners, are partially and sulkily 
appeased, in which socially suicidal and retrogressive 
methods, they are aided, abetted and defended by the noisy, 
verbose, politico-economic cackle of charming, checkmating 
charlatans. And whenever, if ever, affected by what is called 
the margin of cultivation, or the competingly productive 
confines or area of a contiguous or continuous community, 
geographical district, or nation; wages fall as it falls, in 

377 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

inverse ratio as rent rises visibly or tangibly ; or as the 
density or pressure of population increases, and as the social 
gad of class is driven. And wages fall gradually, constantly 
and continuously as those things or margins rise or expand 
(but in rare or exceptional cases wherein the risk of life 
and production is abnormally great and where the loaning 
accursed monster had not yet sprouted sufficient fangs to 
poison justice), as all species of loaners, idlers and trick- 
sters are unigenous and are a unit for their reduction to that 
point that suits their purpose best, not which the laborer 
will consent to work for, but for which he is in desperation 
driven to accept by sheer force of palpable destitution ! In- 
terest depends on the fact of its right with wages being fixed 
by the net or rather gross power of viciously devised, sup- 
purating human law, which is of, and attaches to the mer- 
cenary, scrubby, shabby, shrivelling politician. And when, 
if ever, affected by the magic margin of cultivation or pro- 
duction, it rises as the margin falls, either measuring by pro- 
duction or production's plundering picture, for the monster's 
baby must suck all mother production can spare and still 
exist to give down her milk; which fall can only occur by 
increase of population and as increase of population demands 
increase of the sprite of wealth or circulating credit-tokens 
or money, which increasing demand not being satisfied from 
and by the proper unselfish source. Government, then the 
offspring, interest, of the ghost of wealth, money, increases 
or comes by twins and triplets. And interest rises as the 
margin rises, which can only rise by increase of population 
and its natural and imperative demand for human life sus- 
taining necessities and the consequent demand for a circulat- 
ing medium, which, if inadequate, while in rarely isolated 
cases it might fall but wondrously and only temporarily, in 
general rises the premium on the circulating, fictive, legal, 
mandatory shadow of real actual labor or its productions. 
These may be said to be the evilly conjured human laws of 
wages and interest-rent. But the natural law of wages ! 
Wages depend only on the mental and physical abilities and 
willingness of mankind to apply itself to the land in a sane 
and observing manner. Nature, land, or all natural forces, 
are ever ready to obey the proven decree, to do the rest ! 
The natural law of rent or interest? There is none! As 

378 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

Nature commands all animals to live by individual exertion, 
or "by the sweat of their face," on passing out of the in- 
terest or suckling period! Another puzzle for honest or 
unsuspecting and inquiring minds may be found on pages 
where the remedy for all social evils is proposed and the 
remedies that have been advocated by all others befittingly 
condemned. First as to co-operation, which in its truest 
sense implies or demands the common ownership of land 
and ail agencies employed for its best protection and ex- 
ploitation. But P. and P. attacks co-operation, while pre- 
tending to advance a step on the road to that goal, from 
the standpoint or through the glasses of our present 
iniquitous, or his oft admitted social evil, system, of private 
titles in land, and forgets the right of the people or a repre- 
sentative government to regulate individual shares of pro- 
duction in general, if it has that right to fix the production 
of money or the share of the riskless owner who is by law 
prescribed for, protected and maintained as riskless. We 
read on pages 228-9: "If co-operation was universal (mind 
you) it could not raise wages or relieve poverty. This is 
readily seen." Further on we read in regard to the increas- 
ing of wages or relieving of poverty, while all social evil 
is ascribed to the unequal distribution of land and conse- 
quently, of wealth: "That it can have no such general ten- 
dency is apparent." Would it not have been better to have 
left alone such questions as appear to have been too deep 
and broad for shallow minds to grapple with; for on page 
230, regarding co-operation, we read the admission that is 
made of course with full knowledge of the blighting com- 
petition from without, that "Where it has been tried it has 
in many instances improved perceptibly the condition of 
those immediately engaged in it." Those co-operating com- 
munities generally hold the land in common. But here let 
us read the lame e^tcuse for the improvement : "But this 
is due simply to the fact that these cases are isolated." 
Would such appalling and indescribable social evils exist, 
as do now, if no interest or rent was paid to anyone except 
for the legitimate expenses of government, and every one 
willing to labor received their just recompense, and that you 
made your landholding common and co-operation universal ; 
if those now trying co-operation are benefitted ther-^by, even 

379 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

though they be handicapped by outside individual, state, 
national and international cut-throat competition? Is there 
no higher, purer, brighter ideal for man than that brutal 
one, the individual accumulation of wealth at the expense 
of his just yet vaguely envious fellows? Is that the true 
incentive for the beast-man or the spirit-man? But a sor- 
rowful smile o'erspreads our frightened features as we read 
on page 238: "I thus propose to show that the laws"^^ of 
the universe do not deny the natural aspirations of the 
human heart; that the progress of society might be, and, 
if. it is to continue, must be, toward equality, not toward 
inequality ; and that the economic harmonies prove the truth 
perceived by the Stoic Emperor.* We are made for co- 
operation — like feet, like hands, like eye-lids, like the rows 
of the upper and lower teeth." We might inadvertently 
have looked on the above as an excerpt from a Sunday- 
school mission tract that had stealthily crept into those 
pages while the author dozed in the shadowy, leafy, laby- 
rinthal lanes of psuedo-economic, conflicting theories, were 
it not that we had read on 103 pages further and found 
that the hereditary transmission of acquired qualities again 
sprouts, and enters the struggle of social aggregates in the 
survival of the fittest, as on page 341 we are told: "Men 
improve as they become civilized, or learn to co-operate in 
society." We feel so disheartened by this admission that in 
our weak condition we are totally unqualified for present 
comment. As to government direction or interference as 
proposed and honestly agitated by many earnest philosophic 
philanthropists for the decrease of poverty the natural 
workings or effects of a just resentment for injustice, com- 
monly called crime, etc. We find a flabby, jerky attempt 
to frustrate the fruits certain in time to mature from the 
open, honest, intelligent discussion from these economic 
propositions, by a subtle transposition of the words "re- 
striction and repression" for "direction and regulation." 
Now as all know that the word restriction signifies or im- 
plies a limit or confining, and in fact a repression, and that 
repression means a crushing, a curbing, or a subduing. This 
leaves a vast space between them and the words superin- 

* The italics are ours. 

380 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

tending or directing, or planning, ruling or regulating. 
On page 230 we read : "These are the substitution of govern- 
mental direction for the play of individual action, and the 
attempt to secure by restriction what can better be secured 
by freedom." Well, what would governmental direction 
be but national or universal co-operation. What is this 
freedom here referred to but the opposition of the cut-throat 
competition of the ignorant savage, as we read "that man 
improves as he becomes civilized or learns to co-operate in 
society." On page 231 we read: "But it is evident that 
whatever savors of regulation and restriction is in itself 
bad." But now from among the promised theopneustic 
blessings to be showered on mankind by singularly taxing 
private titles in land, and also from among those magic 
fruits to flow, for which a fanciful promise is the freight 
receipt, let us cull a few of the poorest windfalls from 
page 236: "Government could take upon itself the trans- 
mission of messages by telegraph, as well as by mail, of 
building and operating railroads, as well as opening of and 
maintaining common roads. With present functions so 
simplified and reduced (government collecting all taxes then 
and their consequent distribution, instead of as now, its own 
or national taxes), functions such as these (operating rail- 
roads, etc.) could be assumed without danger or strain, 
and would be under the supervision of public attention 
which is now distracted." What an apt expression! But 
to cap the climax of the fairy- jewelled promise, let us wind 
up with the ideal delight of: "Government would change 
its character and would become the administration of a great 
co-operative society. It would become merely the agency 
by which the common property was administered for the 
common benefit." Now, who dare hold anyone responsible 
for errors, when thus lavishly casting broadcast such pre- 
ternatural prophetic poesy? As to the more general dis- 
tribution of, or equal division, or holding of land, or a 
regulation to a given maximum ; among other things equally 
as shallow or diluent in P. and P. we find the following 
conflicting dictums. Concerning the concentration, or gen- 
eral increase of land holding by individuals, we read pages 
233-4: "Now, the existence of this tendency shows two 
things ; first, that any measures which merely permit or 

381 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

facilitate the greater subdivision of land would be inopera- 
tive (we are not told why. Because in an economic sense it 
would be impossible to logically tell why it would be in- 
operative; particularly so, under initiative and referendum), 
and second, that any measures which would compel it would 
have a tendency to check production. If land in large bodies 
can be cultivated (the inference here is that such is the case) 
more cheaply than land in small bodies, to restrict ownership 
to small bodies will reduce the aggregate production of 
wealth, and in so far as such restrictions are imposed and 
take effect, will they tend to diminish the general produc- 
tiveness of labor and capital?" If large bodies can be oper- 
ated more cheaply, wdiich means more production for similar 
labor, or similar production for less labor, and that there- 
fore it vvould be advisable when proven beneficial ; then why 
not suggest the obliteration of dividing fences or co-opera- 
tion ? But that such a cheesy effort at churning makes very 
poor butter we may smell further on. "The effort there- 
fore to secure a fairer division of wealth by such restric- 
tion (equally allowed maximum land tenure) is liable to 
the drawback of lessening the amount to be divided." Now, 
feeling so light on unloading such a weight of serious con- 
siderations on a subject of such vital importance, w^e are 
pleasantly treated to an allegorical quixotic quiz of cat and 
monkey philosophy, which we rapturously and reverentially 
remember until we read as far as page 323 on which we 
find: "But the great gain of the working farmer can only 
be seen when the effect on the distribution of population is 
considered. * * * If, as is doubtless the case, the 
application of machinery tends to large fields, agricultural 
population will assume the primitive form and cluster in 
villages. The life of the average farmer is now unneces- 
sarily dreary. He is not only compelled to work early and 
late (why?), but he is cut off by the sparseness of popula- 
tion from the conveniences, the amusements, the educational 
facilities, and the social and intellectual opportunities that 
come with the closer contact of man with man. He would be 
far better off in all these respects, and his labor would be 
far more productive if he and those around him held no 
more land than they wanted to use." To dispel any doubt 
that the reader might entertain as to the feelings, sincerity 

382 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

and sanity of the author on this subject, let us read from a 
reassuring footnote, as follows : "^Besides the ernormous in- 
crease in the productive power of labor which would result 
from the better distribution of population there would be 
also a similar economy in the productive power of land." 
How can the best possible distribution of population be at- 
tained? Is it not best embraced in the best possible dis- 
tribution of land, a distribution that would give to the greater 
number, who would personally occupy and use it, an equal 
share with any other individual, as "that, this would give a 
far better or more stable basis to the state than that which 
prevails in England, there can be no doubt" (from a con- 
trast of the small holdings in France). In this sense what 
is the state? Is it not, to coin a phrase, the aggregate indi- 
vidual? If the people are prosperous then, the nation! 
Now all these jingling jumbles of diverse dogmatisms might 
indeed lead most easily the guileless to innocently believe or 
suppose that anyone guileful enough to make such bifariou 
bilateral, asseverated assertions was most likely off balance, 
or had some subtle, subtile, edge-tool to whet. But please 
allow us to respectfully suggest that such might not be the 
case. As for instance, we now most positively declare that 
there is no one who can judge with any kin to accuracy of 
the inflaming feelings enkindled in the mind of the individual 
under such paling, palpitating circumstances, but those whose 
searing zeal and azygous ardor for their own nations as to 
how society should be governed and each atom act, have 
prompted them "to write a book." 

Let us meditate a moment and try to measure with the 
mind's eye the enormous breadth, heighth and profundity 
of the soul consuming pride that fires the passion of the 
individual, now on the eve of needy notoriety, and then 
pardon is assured in advance, or before final judgment is 
announced, yes, we wind up with a half self-chastising 
smile, not for reading the book, but at our own heedlessness 
in not hitherto approximately estimating the dynamic force 
or mighty weight of noise of the cheap, chewed or chattered 
chafif of carving critics eagerly awaiting the arrival of the 
book! How hold to task the mercenary mortal under such 
mind-shattering surroundings of internal shine and external 
shadow onlv from eternal shuffling, preserved bv the seem- 

383 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

ingly smiling, sure shining shekels? But indeed it may 
be said with at least a shade of plausibility that the most 
tinkling inconsistency, not to say jarring contradiction was 
reached by topping the summit of intercedent absurd- 
ities when Interest (rent) was justified and Rent (interest) 
religiously condemned! The husband, the sister abjured! 
The brother, the wife adored ! As the vulgar suppose in the 
hope of enjoying a swim in the gracing grease of the goad- 
ing, glittering, golden god ! On page 35 we read : "In short 
I think we should find that now, as when Dr. Adam Smith 
wrote, 'that part of a man's stock which he expects to yield 
him a revenue is called his capital' * * * ^iXid qualifying 
somewhat his enumeration of money, it is doubtful if we 
could better list the different articles of capital than Adam 
Smith did in the passage which in the previous part of this 
chapter I have condensed." Then in a footnote on page 38 
we read : "In speaking of money in this connection I am of 
course speaking of coin, for although paper money may 
perform all the functions of coin, it is not wealth, and cannot 
therefore be capital." But is not your capital your stock 
that you expect to derive a revenue from? Does anyone 
derive any revenue from $1,000 in paper money? . If real 
money performs all the functions of real money it cannot be 
a counterfeit, and even if of several kinds or colored species 
or tokens all must be entered in the same class in economics, 
just as if a true or Teal man performs all the functions of 
a real man he cannot be an ass, and even if of several kinds 
or colored species all must be entered in the same economic 
class. In the true economic sense any kind of money is not 
wealth, neither is it, nor can it be capital. For all wealth 
or capital must be consumed, either by supplying or satisfy- 
ing the necessities, comforts or insanely vicious whims of 
man, or consumed in its own reproduction; therefore, all 
wealth is perishable. Money is not. In a profane or secular, 
a political or economic sense, money is eternal. But land, 
or the forces of Nature, is truly imperishable. Money is 
the imaginary, humanely devised usurping twin or defiled 
wife of land. Now, then, clearly if rent for land is plain 
robbery, interest for money is sacrilegious robbery. But 
in tlie present generally accepted or common signification 
of the word capital, nothing is considered capital by the 

384 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

heedless but money or credit. In speaking of the farmer's 
capital we say farmer's property or stock. In speaking of 
a company or corporation we ask for how much money are 
they capitalized. We speak not of the farmer's money or 
capital ; we heed not the property of the corporation. This 
common usage confounds the word money or capital with 
wealth. And then if wealth is, capital is not an abstract 
economic term, it is dependent, however derived, on the 
word wealth ; it is a distinguishing term for that part of 
wealth actively applied in the reproduction of wealth or 
increasing production of absolutely human necessities. Money 
cannot be thus apphed, nor thus reproduced. It is not there- 
fore capital, and is not entitled to anything but monetary 
preservation. Webster, of course, was an admirable lexicog- 
rapher, but had no pretentions to the mystic mumblings 
of political economy. The true conceptional idea, in an 
economic sense, of the word wealth is that which of itself 
possesses reproduction or consumable matter and force, 
and this, in the ratio of its volumetric magnitude and human 
indispensability. Money can not be endowed with such 
"immanent attributes ; therefore it cannot be wealth or cap- 
ital. When money was metal or paper it could assist in 
production and was therefore consumable. It was then 
applied as, or consumed into, money, and taken from its 
potential or waiting sphere of usefulness and to that sphere, 
while used as money, forever lost. Anything conceivable 
that cannot tend of itself, or without human law to back 
it, or assist in administering to the conservation, preserva- 
tion and healthy longevity of the human race, or possesses 
no transmutative powers, merit, worth or value for the 
human being, such a thing cannot be rightly said to be 
wealth ; and all things must be classed, relatively, as they 
possess those powers. Terrestrial surface, or national lands, 
as well as land in visible transition or so-called wealth, 
is wealth or riches, or the flowing stream of sustenance 
for the human race. Mars or Jupiter, etc., while beautiful 
to look at, to the human senses, is not. Would one not say 
that the individual would badly need an ice-cold water 
shampoo who would say or assert that five ounces of the 
metal gold ''stamped with certain marks, words, etc., con- 
verting it into monev." — Webster, was the equivalent in 

3«5 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

wealth, or matter of intrinsic value to man, as, one well- 
cared-for acre of land one foot deep, with an inexhaustible 
and indestructible base and surface with air and sunshine 
100 miles high, or the equivalent of 2,178 tons of fertile, 
evenly diffused soil, of human life, comforts, conveniences 
and luxury sustaining powers. Some other writers think 
that they have found the philosopher's stone when the} 
proclaim that things derive their value from the use that 
they are put to. As to gold : Of what use or intrinsic value 
to man, is the gold ring in the African's nose? There may 
be some unfathomably artful meaning in this distinction 
between metallic legal tender and paper legal tender money, 
that the common mortal cannot descend to without a diver's 
suit and appliances. But a shadow of the absurdity of this 
distinction shows on pages 47-8 and reads : "That this uni- 
versal truth (wages not drawn from capital) is so often 
obscured, is largely due to that fruitful source of economic 
obscurities, the confounding of wealth with money." Further 
on in a successful attempt to paint both pot and kettle black 
we are treated to some technical wordy ambiguities, as 
profits, wages, rent, superintendence, interest, compensation 
for risk, etc., and to add to the confusion, to page 116 is 
entrusted: "The division of wealth, into rent, wages and 
profits is- like talking of the division of mankind into men, 
women and human beings." Let us see if we cannot divine 
a more appropriate likeness of the division. Rent being in- 
superably condemned as robbery we will not enumerate it. 
Now, wages being the natural and just reward of the lab- 
orer, if this labor is unaccompanied or unassisted by the 
product of past labor not his own ; in this case wages should 
have a ticket and a towel for the swim. Profit, strange as 
it may at first appear, is the just and natural reproduction 
of the product of past labor, together with an extra or 
separate gain commensurate with the assistance rendered 
the laborer to avail himself more abundantly of the inde- 
finable, ever impartially constant forces of nature; which 
forces demand as an indissoluble forfeit the so-called ele- 
ment of risk, for which she allows no compensation, it 
being the price or cost of human knowledge or learninr^ 
charged by nature for the abuse and desecration of her 
powers and beauties. In this case profits (reproduction 

386 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

being a profit versus decay, as well as a very small per- 
centage of the increase) is entitled to a 'bathing suit, balm, 
ticket and toilet. Interest, the premium on iniquitous in- 
dolence, the penalty imposed on initial industry, is the bane 
of social equality, is the invention and religion of dissolute 
man, is the illegitimate and blasphemous result of the evilly 
devised ravings of selfish, uncivilized man and by him called 
human law. It despises and denies risk, as is seen by the 
general methods of money-loaners demanding three times 
the amount of the loan as security. By no literal code of 
darkness can interest, or money, or price paid for the use 
of riskless money be blended or construed with the just 
reproduction or profit of the product of past labor actively 
and riskily applied. Become befouled, begrimed, besotted as 
the brute, if you will, in a vain endeavor to cloak the crime of 
the infamous coin-cormorant and his co-conspirator the 
chaffing, cowardly, cringing politician, and the inevitable re- 
sult must be to expose either a grinning expenditure of 
fulsome falsehoods for a future full greased palm, a cloven 
foot, or a boudoir to let in the bony building over the brain. 
So, to talk of the just or righteous distribution of wealth into 
wages, profits and interest, is like talking of the division of 
honest mankind into men, women and howling devils. A 
little further on, tow^ards the cheeky, chilling, barren wastes 
of the frigid circle of contorted economic theories we are 
warmingly regaled by the ringing riddle of Bastiat's plane 
allegory, and James' baby cow and Willie denying the corn. 
But we find no suggestion that either or each should make 
his own plane, or pay ten planks, down, for the plane, and 
thus, not establish an insane precedent, nor is it suggested 
that plank planing is more laborious on the mental and 
physical forces, nor that James chose plane making in pref- 
erence to planing planks, the enjoyment of such choice being 
a part recompense, for if all made planes there would be a 
plethora of planes and dearth of planks sufficient to cajole 
the economic hoodoo into chanting his carious, though canty, 
incantation about over-production supply and away-down 
under-consumption demand, and neither Willy nor Jimmy 
would receive competitive benefits, nor mutual or co-opera- 
tive blessings. But the callow, shallow apagoge, reasoning, or 
suggestive remarks on Bastiat's plane, is the plainly naked 

Z^7 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

and nipping desire to inculcate in the minds of the carelessly 
magnanimous producer, the idea that, since interest is cold 
and cruel an cursed robbery, yet there may be some Satanic 
mystery connected with the immanent powers of money, 
that it would be advisable to pay it and say nothing but saw 
wood, while the advisedly imitating economic "parrots of 
the plane" will shoulder all responsibility for the blasphem- 
ously analogous comparison of the interest mystery, with 
the eternal mystery of the forces of nature in all germina- 
tion, maturation and decay; as we read on page 138: ''It 
is not an arbitrary but a natural thing; it is not the result 
of a particular" (particular sickly palaver, we thought it 
was Hindoo, or Patagonian) "social organization, but of 
laws of the universe which underlie society" (and belie and 
defy the laws of nature or the universe). "It is therefore 
just." In lieu of angering, bearding, or boring, now, the 
patient, merciful reader with any more comment on the 
above question, we will give a little about the cow story on 
page 135. William is enjoined to give back to James, who 
loans a calf, at the end of a year not a calf but a cow. Sup- 
pose that J. and W.'s ma's had each a cow, and each dutiful 
cow had a calf, but James' ma's cow refused to live and died 
of supply and demand, so J. had W., to care for or raise the 
calf until J. could buy a cow the following year, when W. 
would return a calf of a similar age as the one at loaning, 
then was J. not benefitted as well as W., who at first could 
have bought a calf as well as borrowed it, and if J. was not 
benefitted by loaning the calf, why loan it ? He should have 
retained it. The whole proposition is as silly, and is thor- 
oughly in keeping with J.'s late lamented cow, and shows that 
as soon as we leave first principles we succeed in disgusting 
instead of instructing our neighbors, and irreversibly become 
generative fools among our fallow fellows. If one should 
plant and care for a tree, a wheat grain, or raise a cow, the 
fruit in either case, or milk, would be the product of the 
labor expended, in connection with the indefinable forces of 
nature, in the perfection or maturation of either or all, 
whether the produce is gathered in one day or 100 years, 
PLAIN FACTS galley one hundred and t^vo 
it is still the product of labor, but never interest! Should 
one raise a burro, or a mule, until it was able to work, its 

388 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

work would be the return for, or product of, the labor ex- 
pended in the perfection, etc., of the animal, for the repro- 
duction of which one must immediately prepare. But if 
either animal, preferably the former, should take his hind 
hand in his ni-right foot and kick one's brains out, the 
transactive result would be justified on the sacred grounds 
of the holy laws of the universe and be reverentially chris- 
tened interest. We should here remark that Bastiat's riddle 
reminds us of a piece of poetry we found, when aimlessly 
wandering through the haven of orthodox poets, the author- 
ship of which, each one claiming, was the sole contention 
existing in their aerial retreat. It read as follows: Now 
Bastiat, William and James all had very large brains. That 
an unfortunate blind man could quite readily see. But how 
Shylock must cheerily laugh since he knows that the calf 
had so much more brains than each one of the three. On 
page 13 we read concerning the author's cash capital: "That 
1, having a thousand dollars, can certainly let it out at 
interest, does not arise from the fact that there are others 
not having a thousand dollars, who will gladly pay me for 
the use of it if they can get it in no other way but from 
the fact that the capital which my thousand dollars repre- 
sents has the power (capital has, not the money) of yielding 
an increase to whoever has it, even though he be a million- 
aire." Who will have it to-morrow? It represents one 
thing to-day, another to-morrow ; it represents for the year 
and during the year over sixty times its supposed represent- 
ing measure and yields sixty annual interests, rather dear 
circulating medium, will nature yield sixty fold? Why not 
buy property and go to work and produce or employ labor? 
On taking the cue we exchange our property and receive not 
only $10,000, but with it also, the legal laugh on labor ! Now, 
pugh! stinking labor! we now can riot in revelry and ape 
the social noxious ninny! Is this not why sufficient cur- 
rerxcy wcmld lead to hurtful speculation and should be con- 
demned ? Certainly that such as letting out at interest is the 
case to-day — ^whether through the operation of just or unjust 
law— is quite evident. So at a glance can be seen how 
smooth, and easy it is to write and gloss over such social 
crime, with sweet smacking sentences, or candy-covered- 
catch phrases and have them dovetail with the rudder of the 

389 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

princely pleasure yacht swiftly skipping in the swim and 
skilfully steering clear of the shivering shrieks aboard com- 
mon humanity's wreck. Suppose a producer had an advan- 
tageous opening for so much of the product of past labor, 
that was by law and custom measured by $i,ooo, and while 
waiting to hypothecate or jeopardize the accumulated prod- 
uct of his labor to three times the amount, for its safe 
return, but would not pay interest. Of course he would 
not receive the loan. Who would suffer by the refusal? All 
society would suffer by not obtaining the reproduction of 
$i,ooo worth of perishable property and the probable in- 
crease brought about by natural force and human action. 
The producer showed his laudable willingness to assist in 
the happy perpetuation of the human race. The money 
loaner proves himself the criminal. He would not suffer 
had he loaned the money, but as a factor in society he would 
be the gainer, and who knows but that the increase would 
have been applied by the fanatical farmer to the mission of 
the faithful, for the famished, fretting, free and foreign 
waifs of the Five Points. When secured against risk why 
return him any of the active increase? Is it to recompense 
him for — by replacing — the numerous rich bandanas con- 
sumed or worn out in mopping the nightly perspiration from 
his sleepless brow ; yes, perspiration engendered by the all- 
absorbing anxiety created by the fear or knowledge that 
the earth run its course and that he would not have enough 
to purchase a first-class ticket and pullman berth for Shy- 
lock's heaven? Can we find any precedent, in the illus- 
trations to our senses of nature's law for the granting of a 
premium on iniquitous inactivity and the imposition of a 
penalty on honest, healthful labor? If the laborer is worthy 
of, or entitled to the natural product of his labor, why rob 
the laborer to that amount for the benefit of the brow- 
bandana-sponger? Is not the latter recompensed by labor's 
preservation , of the legal value, or parity of his figurative 
product that once for him represented his potatoes produced 
forty years ago, and also in allowing him, in an industrial 
community to loaf while others labor? Does it ever occur 
to mouthy patriots yet gold-idolators that we have in our 
midst I GO men (ay, as far as the metal gold is concerned 
ten men, if not less), should the caprice hunch them, which 

390 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

present omens point to such disposition, to exchange wilely 
their watered yet withering wealth into its legal tin-type 
money? What paralysis they would and could inflict on 
national life, love, virtue? Yes, to-day even do you not 
I'eel virtually if not actually the initial force of the policies 
and the practices of that Nation-Saviour-Patriot (Wilkes 
Booth) working from the idiotic brain of the heedless, and 
the wilful, windy, warbling of the golden-psalmodist 
(though mayhap ignorantly traitorous) through the cun- 
ningly fertile and well-trained brain of Bastiat's-plane-gold- 
en calf ! Let us see by what calamitous alternative this 
national association, or political liberty suicide, could only be 
averted. By returning to that old time and tried logical 
policy, strenuously advocated and partly enacted by, the now 
by some despised and forgotten Patriot, Abraham Lincoln! 
He knew the treason of the money-might. He warned his 
people. The war was over ! Money-might-mandate ! He 
must not live! (It was easy to spur on a supposedly 
aggrieved daring English madman ! ) That policy that truth- 
fully declares that money is but the illustrating evidences of 
the community agreement — not for the planting of potatoes 
nor chopping of wood — nature peremptorily compels this, 
but only for the easy exchange of either and as a peremptory 
prima facie token or receipted note, that society owes so 
much to the lawful possessor. But then who would return 
to that policy of Abraham Lincoln, which gave us that 
money? W^hy that money! What did it do for us? Why 
it only saved the nation when besieged by diverse enemies I 
Not only did the nation have to fight the members of its 
own family, who entertained different ethic or moral, yet 
economic, ideas, and who fought bravely, fearlessly, and 
nobly for their openly expressed convictions, for the nation 
had to enroll about nine to their two, to quiet them. But 
it had to fight the fiendish craft of that social-cholera-breed- 
ing-octopus whose cursed cunning and contaminating carcass 
repose on the British island, that fiendish monster facetiously 
called honest money, whose loathsome offspring — it matters 
not which of the plagues — -is pettishly and sportively dubbed 
by the brainless dude as well as the obese baron, interest! 
As well as to fight those contemptibly insidious, secretive, 

391 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

leech-like enemies within, who nauseatingly advertised as the 
sole preventive against the gangrene of the nation's wound, 
that it be merely rubbed with the mighty metal gold, and in 
their delirium went so far as to openly threaten national 
disruption if the virtues of their hoodoo charm was not 
supremely adored and receive the Saviour-like appellation 
of ultimate redemption. Oh ! what a whirring, whiskered 
term, since no money or any money can ever be redeemed 
— was the slave redeemed when exchanged for money, or 
the money redeemed when exchanged for him? — while it 
exists or is used as money, except as far as by its acceptance 
by government or individual in the cancellation of debts, 
gives it redemption, but when accepted, it is still money and 
ever, otherwise to be redeemed. But some large hearted, 
singularly single, pious lady may come to the cynical bachelor 
(how can we refuse) with a most pathetic, soul-stirring 
appeal for the poor, well-bred lady with the bare pittance 
of an income from $10,000 at a miserable 6 per cent., or a 
niggardly $600 per annum. Of course to add to the com- 
plicating pathos of the case the dear lady is now sixty-five 
years of age. She never had to trouble herself with the 
cares of life, and has not the faintest idea of any business. 
Now we -find in her case that the expectation of life, taken 
from life insurance statistics, would be eleven and one-tenth 
years more, by which, if the principal was divided, it would 
give the poor old lady $900 per year. But mellowed by the 
moisture in the maiden's melting eye we are moved to pray 
that she be granted a longer, happy life, by 50 per cent., 
that would give sixteen and two-third years, which would 
give her $600, as before, without the chance of blackening 
her soul by the sin of robbing, the opportunity of knitting 
from the rich old lady without ten cents capital. Was she 
born not with a caul on her head but with gold-rimmed 
spectacles through which she could see the justice of interest, 
and a silver spoon in her mouth, with which to eat the life- 
giving fruits created from the pure water crystal diamond 
ever sparkling on prostrate labor's brow? And now her 
transient transition here being near complete, and expect- 
ing soon to be beckoned back to render that account de- 
manded "from those to whom much is given (spectacles and 

392 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

spoons) much shall be expected?" Is this $10,000 unqual- 
ifiedly demanded to pay back St. Peter not only the market 
price or principal, but also the interest accumulated in the 
spectacles and spoons? Listen! But she would leave the 
money for charitable purposes, perhaps to be divided be- 
tween God's poor. Are only those God's poor who enter 
a building over which some particular emblem or design 
has been placed when cut in a rock by some fame-drunken 
sculptor ? Who can define or imagine a charity arising from 
without, or not founded on justice and the other inseparable 
part of the duad, Love? Is not justice and love the chief 
eternal principles of your Heaven and nature? Without 
which the word or idea of charity is but mockery and slang ! 
Is this the charity that Christian civilization gives us? Is 
this the civilization whose only bulwark is the criminal code ? 
Yes, first create the criminal and then scribble the code! 
If justice instead of time-desecrated was an element in your 
social organization, or civilization, the rich old lady would 
not be forced to knit or be a ragged beg-grar; nor the poor 
old lady be possessed of $10,000 that she never threaded 
a needle, or w^et her hands for. Are the vastly greater 
number of widows born without any specs, but original, to 
be condemned for life to an earthly hell to atone for the 
sacrilegious crime of man's justification of interest-robbery 
(rent, or torn), so that the dear old lady may leave the 
$10,000 perhaps, for the conversion of the Hindoo, or Sikh, 
who now practices enough of natural love and justice to 
allow the meanest mendicant to stretch their weary, withered 
frames on the wondrous, wavy, marble floors of their 
grandest gold-adorned temples. If at death the $10,000 
went directly back to the interest payers, to whom it more 
than rightfully belongs, there would be still but a flimsy 
justice in it. We read on page 125 an assertion repeated 
from, and in keeping with the rest of those selected by the 
numerous peddlers of economic clap-trap, ''that men seek 
to gratify their desires with the least exertion." That some 
men do, goes without saying, but that the great majority 
of mankind do not, goes the same road. Of course the 
great pro rata increase of production and consumption over 
the increase of population, before and since improved ma- 

393 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

chinery or the happy fruitful reahzation of the creative 
crystallization of concerted human reason, flatly belies or 
confutes the above old, worn-out quotation. Besides we 
can clearly see its refutation by stopping for an instant in 
our reckless race of rambling, random statements, to calmly 
and unbiasly observe the seemingly perpetual and appalling 
deplorable error of poor, benighted, ill-led labor in its de- 
mands, when it wildly and ferociously stops short to growl 
at its ever-curbing snaffle-bit, which demands have never 
been, with existing wages and increase asked — even when 
most unreasonable — more than 25 per cent, of its natural and 
just reward, the product of its sole exertion ! Thus do manly 
mankind seek to satisfy nature's cravings by quarter-paid 
constant labor ! Ever scorning the doctrine of "The survival 
of — them — the fittest." But let us here frankly and im- 
partially remember this : That ignorance alone is the only 
bond-slave of labor. So our highest duty is plain, all our 
efforts and energy should be directed and sheltered by the 
shibboleth of the poor editor of a well-known New York 
weekly newspaper, during his years of twilight or previous 
to his complete capitulation to the seductive wiles of market- 
able peculating politicians and the mighty, monstrous magic 
of monopoly; that shibboleth will live and bear abundant 
wholesome fruit, when party politics and dependent labor 
shall forever be no more. Yes. Let all who beheve that 
the highest ideal of man can only be attained through the 
universal brotherhood of man, and by this only can man 
from out his being dispossess the brute, and perfect his real 
mission here by establishing man's heaven on earth, to fitting- 
ly prepare him for God and man's own, unknown next! 
Therefore let us join our forces to "Spread the Lio:ht." Yes, 
ever being careful, lest our innate cupidity lead us to stray, 
by tempting us to outdo, yet ape the gods by endeavoring to 
become as, and produce, that pure, dazzling, soul-inspiring 
brightness that demands from imitative, proud or priggish 
man who even dares to irreverently gaze upon it, that pecu- 
liar, optic penalty of pain, by prattling, puny man pro- 
nounced snow-blindness. If space permitted we would like 
to comment some more, on that "least exertion" quotation, 
as well as on several others and compare the emblems of 

394 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

one with the other while amazingly gazing at the heart- 
stabbing scenes of their conflict, even though we keenly 
recognize the hypnotizing power of the highly prized, bril- 
liant, sparkling gems most seductively set in the halo of your 
Christian civilization. They may be snapshotted by the 
detective thug's kodak as follows: No. i, But children 
and fools speak the truth ; No. 2, Words are the counters of 
wise men, but the circulating medium of fools ! But we 
must be content with the few we have cited and barely 
touched; and, with the virtue or intrinsic value of the old 
Latin axiom: '*Ex, uno, disce omnes," "From one or a few, 
you may judge of the rest." Besides we have not the slight- 
est intention of trying to make these "Revelations" a great 
book, for ever ringing in our ears is the admonition of the 
old Greek proverb : "Mega biblion, mega kalon," or "A great 
book is a great evil." But in our review of P. and P. we are 
faithfully forced to say that the most potently deplorable and 
ruefully felt fact, in our imperfect judgment, of all this inter- 
twined, confused juggling with wigghng words, delusive 
dictums, and pusy proverbs, while loudly and searingly 
denouncing the inconsistency of the very numerous, notor- 
ious writers, is, that it appears, and sounds, like unto the 
clanging chorus of the song, of those spirits lost, quacking 
quasi economic lore, in their vain endeavor to solve, by 
defending, the enigma passed down in the bedazzling, bardic 
babble of barbaric ancient tongues, the philosophy of which 
defense is as delicate as, and the literal counterpoise of its 
antique author's mummy, that cannot bear the gentle touch 
of li^ht; and, in their perpetual-motion, brain-destroying 
efforts to reconcile the factious squabbling triune, of interest- 
robbery, namely falsehood, hatred, injustice, with the 
sublime union or trinity of man's -natural recomoense, or 
wages, namely justice, love, truth. Should it ever become 
possible that anyone shall in the near future peruse these 
lines the reader may remember that for the past twenty 
years that an indomitable and growing party have been dis- 
cussing both ardently and intelligently among other divisions 
of political economy the financial question or the true func- 
tions of money versus the inherent attributes of material, 
etc., and continuously demanded the free coinage of gold 

395 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

and silver, together with United States Treasury notes issued 
and controlled directly by government, which at best is but 
a feeble and single step in true economic reform, as it 
would only do away with one assured or certified interest — 
the same as they now consistently demand, such notes to 
supply, in case of any deficit discovered in, the adequate, or 
commensurate, volume of circulating medium required for 
the healthy or normal transactions of production and ex- 
changee of same. About the time that P. and P. was copy- 
righted this party, then known as the national greenback 
party, now known as the national people's party and now 
Populist. 

We may remark in passing that the members of the 
old greenback party that, by whatever name known, in 
the aggregate are too intelligent, patriotic, unselfish, and 
so thoroughly imbued with the most evenly diffused, gen- 
uinely true American spirit of equality, freedom and jus- 
tice, that nothing short of the supernatural could shake 
their erudite and honestly conceived convictions of the 
plain justice of the greenback tenets; tenets that will 
blaze with a mid-day sun of justice over a United States 
Republic, i,ooo years hence, when not only the abom- 
inable conditions wrought by individual money tax, of 
which the most unsightly, labor craving bare subsistence, 
will be unknown, but the expressive marks of such ideas 
will be read of as obsolete terms, even of past history! 
This party at that time had about twenty representatives to 
the lower house of Congress, apparently with every pros- 
pect of increase. This was too much for the American 
and European monometallic or certain-high-interest 
lords. Something must be done — an opportune time for 
neatly robed nonsense, dashed with piquant specks of 
truth, to bait the fluttering, flopping labor-sucker — no 
deed known to Satan was too dark that would aid to stop 
the growing sentiment, or to divert or distract public 
attention and drive it on any chimerical chase that could 
be schemed through the slums or sailed in the swim. The 
monometallic-brained lordlings were willingly assisted by 
such mistaken capitalists as railroaders, because thisj 
party advocated the government ownership of railroads, 

396 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

and some of them free travel for bonafide citizens. By 
the land holders, because this party advocated or dis- 
cussed the nationally universal limitation of land hold- 
ing, the embryo maximum average proposed being about 
one hundred acres; and by numerous other hordes, who 
never consistently or persistently seek to accomplish any 
reform, whose brains seem to be located in their heels, 
rendering them always prepared to run after every fuga- 
cious fad that flies, and satisfied to catch a trample from 
the shadow. Quesnay's unique tax Phoenix was resur- 
rected. Lucky bird ! But, alas ! the wings were cut that 
once flapped the "private title," and was henceforth com- 
mitted from air to earth, also in the sentence one r^ads 
that Phoenix and private titles must ever walk the earth 
and never attempt to fly of¥ again ! ''Progress and Pov- 
erty" was published. Most likely the author had not 
criminally connived with the political and economic ene- 
mies of the Republic, although they hoist and shelter 
under false named banners, and as the astute, money loan- 
ing fiend has no country he belongs to every party likely 
to succeed or further his "gratification of desire with 
the least possible exertion," yet to a partisan it would 
reasonably look suspicious. But why not it happen that 
the author by his book assisted in creating and maintain- 
ing more evil than he knew ! Whatever may be said 
against the book, we feel free to say that it is our falli- 
ble opinion that, if the latter section or two — wherever 
pathetic or sentimental sayings have been dealt in — of 
the book had been written first, then the heavens might 
not have fallen. For the tiny streaks of sunshine that 
here and there flittingly dapple those pages might have 
furnished light to the author in his perils of pearl diving, 
seeking the pearly, solid, truthful rocks on which to build 
erect his fundamental principles ! Light sufficient to guide 
him in a straight or heavenward course, although of neces- 
sity finding himself beneath that turbid ocean, thickly 
darkened by the falsehoods of the mephitic, mimicing men- 
tors of Satan's economic code ! We believe that in this 
opinion none with us will more readily concur than the 
author. . Let all this be as it may, we reluctantly say 

397 



PLAIN ECONOMIC FACTS 

that, as a marvel of confusing, undulating, rotating and 
circulating medium of human understanding, indeed, it is 
a great book ! That the author deserves great credit for 
the admirable hardihood displayed — in those times of 
eclectic form and aesthetic taste — in classifying any social 
evil by its proper name, which may in time result in suffi- 
cient fruits of good, to counteract an enormous load of 
evil, all must certainly admit. But that the concentrating 
of two or more taxes into one and placing it on private 
titles to land will permanently abate any settled, pres- 
ent, economic or social evil, we believe, that upon the 
minds of all observing, thoughtful beings that the impres- 
sion left — of such a hope, idea or thought, much less 
result, by anyone — resembles that fantastic, fleeting, flit- 
ting form never found, but from out the- shifting sphere of 
suppositious sights and scenes fading, as in a fancy, 
fabled, fairy-flirting view of the fair republic of Dream ! 
With respects, The Author. 



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